


dancing with the demons

by axzanier



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-28 08:39:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 51,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7632979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/axzanier/pseuds/axzanier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Settling into their new home, the team gets to work investigating Hydra bases and tracking down the source of the weapon in Prague, however, things do not go as planned as the past comes back to haunt all of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, yeah, Eurovision and Civil War started this whirlwind of writing and it continues with this one. I had hoped two strict canon would be enough, but my brain is a scary place and insisted that this one be written as well. And, sadly, I've set myself up for another one when this is done.

 

 

 

 

**_dancing with the demons_ **

 

 

"Guys… guys this place is _so cool._ Your own secret base, this makes you legit now, right? Am I right?"

We had kidnapped… err _borrowed_ Scott Lang to get us up and running from a computer standpoint. Actually, he'd been more than happy to help when I called and asked, we just didn't dare let him know where we'd taken up residence, more for his safety than our own. And he'd been bouncing off the walls for two days for the most part. He'd thought our computer situation had been pitiful, the tablets - high end ones admittedly - supplied by T'Challa just barely keeping us on the grid this far from nowhere.

Scott had given us a bag, specifically a small paper bag, of what look like toys and warned us to decide where to put them before making them big.

Remembering the fuel truck at the airport I understood, but everyone else looked at him as if he'd been insane.

He gotten the servers set up, while we'd mounted the monitors in a nearby room that had been big enough for the task. The ancient desks and chairs would serve well enough for now. Biggest thing was to get back on the grid and be aware of what had been going on in the world while we'd been in the dark.

A couple days, literally, when we'd blown fuses after powering up the mains.

Scott had pronounced the tech overall adequate. Outdated for today, but state of the art back in the aughts. When I told him this place hadn't been used since the eighties he'd just nodded and said, "Hydra always did have top notch tech," and just kept going.

He didn't care that the facility had been Hydra, he was having too much fun playing with all the nifty toys he'd found and those he'd brought with him.

All of which had led to today, where we'd turn the system on and hoped like hell it worked.

"Ready?" Scott asked glancing over his shoulder at us.

"Seriously?" Sam snarked. "Just do it, man."

I chuckled and watched as he hit the power button and all the screens flickered to life about us. Many had been mounted on the walls, but three were on the desk, using that term loosely. Three ancient ugly metal desks jury-rigged together to create a behemoth that would be the central control for the whole system.

All the screens were dark.

"Uh, shouldn't there be pictures or something?" Bucky pointed out, tone more than a touch wry.

"Oh ye of little faith." Scott began typing furiously on the keyboard, code scrolling up the monitor in front of him. "You got those dishes cleaned off and aligned, right?" he glanced over at Sam whose look darkened noticeably.

"Yes, we did," Wanda answered before Sam could let fly with an epithet or three. She looked bored. It hadn't been easy adjusting to living with three men. At least Sam could cook, well, better than me and Bucky anyway. And now we'd added a fourth, who acted like a giddy schoolgirl every time I walked into a room. I had to admit to finding it amusing to a degree. It would make this whole rogue Avenger thing far easier if everyone reacted that way.

"Cool, cool." Scott returned to his typing, as I watched over his shoulder. I had no clue what he was doing. Nat had handled a lot of the tech in the field, since hacking would never be a specialty of mine. As she had always liked to put it; I punched my way out of situations and I did it well.

A soldier not a spy.

And, yes, there most certainly was a difference between the two.

None of us here were spies, so we needed working tech to handle that side of it for us. Thus calling in Lang to assist.

"Huh," he muttered, sitting back for a moment before diving in again.

"Problem?" Bucky asked, a frown causing creases between his eyebrows.

"More like the opposite," he mumbled, focused on the work before him.

Buck shot a look my way and I shrugged not having any more clue than him.

Scott tapped a few dozen more keys and suddenly the screens sprang to life all around the room. "I'll need to tweak the algorithms a bit, but you are officially live."

I clapped him on the shoulder. "Good work."

"Oh, and you are not on any major data service."

"Uh, there's other options?" Sam asked, sounding confused. "I mean not that I want to be caught 'cause we're using Verizon, but I thought that's why you brought that fancy encryption thingie."

Scott nodded far too vigorously in my opinion, in his element and enjoying every minute of it. "Yep, yep. That's what it's for and you'll be using it just in case, but you guys have your own satellite, I'm running you through that. You have access like I've never seen before. They might be dicks, but Hydra has some awesome tech."

I turned to Bucky who shrugged. "Can't say I'm surprised. Can we tell if others are using the satellite?"

Scott nodded again. "There definite usage throughout the system, I'll set up a program to track it. Might be nothing more than computers talking to each other on a set schedule, but I can probably get locations."

_Holy shit._

"You're saying we have an in to Hydra private communications?" Sam questioned in clear shock.

"Looks that way. Don't know that there's much out there, though. SHIELD supposedly took the remaining bigwigs down a couple months back."

Bucky snorted. "Cut off one head two more will take their place."

Sam growled softly. "Someone new and worse will take over. Imagine if Rumlow were still alive."

I had to play devil's advocate. "They never did find a body."

"Because he blew himself up," Wanda stated, tone ice cold.

She still hadn't fully forgiven herself for that accident.

"Wanda-"

"I know, not my fault, but the bastard better be dead or I'll kill him myself," she snarled, then sucked in a deep breath before releasing it slowly. "Sorry," she muttered in apology.

I shook my head. "No need." I rubbed my hands together. "Looks like it's time to get down to work."

"Cool. Let the training classes begin." Scott said, bouncing up from the chair and waving for me to sit.

Time to put my words to action.

 

~^~^~^~^~

 

The shout of surprise dragged me up from my work. The cursing that followed got me to set down the brushes and grab a cloth to clean my hands as I walked towards the sound.

I found Scott shoved against the wall, hands up in the universal sign of surrender, Bucky's right arm across his throat with just enough pressure to keep Mr. Lang from even trying to resist.

"Bucky," I barked, hoping I wouldn't have to physically intervene this time.

He twitched, shook his head then backed away still ready to attack.

"Scott, you okay?"

His hand went to his throat and rubbed it. "Yeah."

"Sorry," Bucky mumbled, looking like he wanted to run away. "Didn't know anyone else was awake." He flicked his eyes over to me, guilt written there.

"Dude, you didn't need to go all crouching tiger on me." Scott shrugged, setting his shoulders. "But I get it. You're still running on battle conditions."

"What the hell would you know about it?" Bucky snapped as I walked closer to intervene if necessary.

Scott raised his hands. "Nothing, man, but I have done time. You gotta be aware all the time, least till you can find someone you trust to watch your back. So I get it. Just, I thought I was on your side."

Bucky sighed heavily. "You are. I reacted without thinking." He met my eyes finally.

"Bad one tonight?" I asked, knowing that the memories sometimes came back as dreams, not many of those involving the Winter Soldier pleasant ones. Far more likely to be ones to just feel more guilt over. He had good days and bad ones. This one looked to be starting off bad.

He nodded. "This is one of those days I wish I could wipe those memories away."

Scott shook his head. "No, you got to own them. Accept them, learn from them and move on."

Bucky stared at him as if the man had gone insane. "What?"

Scott shrugged. "They're what make you who you are. Look, I ain't perfect, far from it, in fact, but Hank thought I deserved a second chance. So do you, I'm thinking, but you gotta accept the good with the bad and use it."

For an instant Bucky looked like he wanted to explode with anger, I'd said some of the same things to him over and over again, but he kept complaining I was biased, wanting my Bucky back, a man who had been torn apart and put back together poorly thanks to Hydra, and yet… yet here was this man, this virtual stranger saying the _exact same words_.

This time they had an impact as I saw understanding on my friend's face for the first time since I'd found him in that tiny apartment in Bucharest.

"You don't know me," Bucky argued, but it was halfhearted at best.

"So? I've read up on you. On James Barnes, you were never anything but a good man with a good heart by all accounts. And besides he," he hooked a thumb in my direction, "calls you friend. I'd say that's the best endorsement possible." He looked from me to Bucky and back then shivered. "Now, it's fucking freezing in here. I'm gonna make some hot chocolate, you guys want any?"

Bucky stood stock still for a moment, still in shock perhaps over the revelation he'd just been hit upside the head with then shrugged. "Sure, why not?"

I trailed along, trying to hide the feeling of relief that flooded through me. I don't know if Buck would have been handling the dreams better if we had stayed in Wakanda, probably though, as being in a Hydra facility seemed to bring the worst of them to the fore.

Scott had the milk heating on the stove before anyone of us spoke.

"You guys need more windows," he muttered, staring at the concrete walls about the room.

Buck snorted. "Wouldn't be much of a secret base if they could see in."

"Huh. True. But you really need reliable heat. Where are we? Canada? Northern Rockies?"

Buck shot a look at me.

"What? I didn't tell him. And we blacked out the windows for the flight." I hadn't wanted to knock the man out or put a hood on his head for the trip, be his bad luck to end up air sick.

"Jeez, guys, math nerd here. Flight speed and time gave me a rough radius and the fact that's fucking cold even this deep in the mountain gave me a reasonable guess as to where. Do you think I'm gonna rat you out or something?"

"No, but you could be... encouraged to tell." We'd done it to protect him and his family, not because we didn't trust him, He'd proven his worth in Germany.

He shook his head. "My family is well protected and stubborn. You think the government didn't go after them when you broke me out of the Raft? We're good." He turned about to slowly stir in the chocolate and the scent of cocoa filled the kitchen. "You guys know you can call on me anytime for help, and not just for setting up your wifi, right?"

"We know," Bucky responded, watching the man with new eyes. "And I'm sure we will. You have some pretty cool toys too."

I snickered. Bucky had been fascinated by the disks that made the miniaturized pieces of equipment full sized. Hell, we all had been. Pym's tech was pretty damn amazing and had fueled all kinds of rumours during the Cold War according to the files I'd looked over. Then again, a lot of what The Howling Commandos had done had been the stuff of legend. The Hydra weapons alone straight out of science fiction, but, then again, so was I.

Tall tales and exaggerations to tell by a campfire, or over a cup of hot cocoa on a cold night.

"Sorry about the heat, the furnace is older than dirt and keeps crapping out at unexpected moments. Finding parts has been challenging, but we've managed so far." Me and Sam had been beating on the poor thing for weeks now with only marginal success. Those of us with normal temperature regulation had taken to bundling up and piling the blankets three and four thick at night. Poor Wanda walked around the place in a heavy coat some days while me and Bucky could get by in shirt sleeves. We got cold, but the temps in the base never dipped below thirty no matter how cold outside, except in the hangar. That big door in the roof not having much insulation. I couldn't wait till summer to see how hot it would get in there.

"I'll poke at it tomorrow," Scott offered. "I'm not too bad with the mechanical."

"It's dead, they just don't realize it yet," Bucky commented, watching Scott thoughtfully.

"We'll see." Scott turned off the burner, hunted down three mugs, and poured a measure of hot chocolate into each. He handed them around, then stuck the pot in the sink and filled it with water to soak.

Steam rose from the mugs and we all took a few moments to sip at the sweet treat.

"So, why here? I mean, I get that you needed a base of operations, but there's got to be dozens of abandoned bases all over the planet. There must have been one a bit more centrally located. Europe maybe."

Bucky grinned. "Should we show him?"

I shrugged. I trusted Scott enough to bring him here, maybe he'd have some ideas on how to make use of what we had found. "Sure."

"Oooo, show me what?" He seemed giddy as a child on Christmas morning and I had to admit I found it refreshing. How bad could exile be if he seemed to find it normal?

Mugs in hand Bucky led the way deeper into the complex to the biggest room after the hangar. He swung open the door and let Scott walk in first, he made it about two steps before stopping dead, head swiveling back and forth as he tried to take everything in.

The room had to be at least a hundred yards deep, twice as wide with a ceiling twenty-five feet high. Not that we'd measured it. The aisles were wide enough to drive a jeep down with room to spare and the shelving units wide enough to park one on.

On every surface were boxes.

And in every box were files.

Millions of files.

Hydra files.

Bucky had chosen this base because it had handled administrative data flow for the vast majority of Hydra's entire system. Bases, and ops, and operatives; outdated to a degree, yes, but still useful. Given our plan to track down remaining Hydra bases and tech this place couldn't be any more perfect for us.

If we could come up with an efficient way to get through the files.

A daunting task to say the least.

Looked like Wanda might get that chance to be a secretary after all.

"Hydra files?" Scott asked, goggle-eyed.

Bucky nodded. "Decades if not centuries worth."

"This is so cool. Oh, oh, you're gonna go after whoever used that Hydra tech in Prague aren't you?"

Damn the man was smart. "That's the plan. With Hydra supposedly dead their toys are just lying about for anyone to find."

"And there's more than a few groups you probably don't want getting a hold of it. Stark being at the top of that list."

There had to be a story behind that comment, but this did not seem to be the time for it. I'm sure, now that we were online, that I could do some digging and discover why Pym seemed to dislike Stark so much.

"We need an efficient way to get through all of this," Bucky waved at the files.

"Aside from hiring a fleet of temps, scanning them into the computer may be the best option, but even that will take time." He sipped at the hot chocolate, thinking. "I'm sure it's organized somehow, we figure that out it'll make it easier to target the files you want."

He wandered into the stacks, brushing dust off boxes as he went.

"They're coded, we just haven't figured out what they mean yet." I mentioned. It wasn't like we hadn't tried doing something with the information, but we'd been more focused on making the base livable than going through the file room.

"He doesn't know?" Scott asked, waving vaguely in Bucky's direction without ever turning to look at him.

"Assassin, not paper pusher," Bucky reminded, trying to hide the smile. "The letters, for lack of a better word, aren't from any language I recognize."

"You have a list of every letter?"

I shook my head. "Not yet, why?"

Scott shrugged. "It's a code. Once I have all the parts and a selection of combinations I should be able to decrypt it."

Well, I guess Scott had turned out to be the right person to call after all.

"Tomorrow though, I still need some more sleep."

I couldn't argue with that.

"What were you painting?" Scott asked as he walked back towards us.

Buck shot me an odd look and I just sighed. I had been hoping they hadn't noticed, but given I had paint smeared on my shirt and hands I guess I should be happy they waited this long to call me out on it. "Nothing," I mumbled.

"Cough it up, Steve," Bucky teased. "Self portraits maybe?"

I shook my head. "Come on."

I led them back through the hanger to what we'd dubbed the garage. Another huge room, though dwarfed by both the hangar and the file room, the ceiling high above us, and with a long tunnel leading to an exit nearly a mile away. We'd found the remains of several Jeeps and turned them into two functioning ones, which, once we'd gotten the door clear, allowed us to drive to the nearest town for supplies instead of flying the quinjet.

One wall had been covered with a huge Hydra image, the many legged kraken like creature irritating me with it's presence, so I had decided to cover it with something new.

The centerpiece was a red star, out of which would come two white wings. They had been sketched out, but not painted in yet, the star only half done. It was simple, but had felt right.

Bucky cocked his head. "SSR wings? Like we had on the Commandos uniforms?"

I nodded.

"And the star fits both of you. Winter Soldier and Captain America." Scott stated, getting what I had been trying to do easily. "Now you need a name."

I shook my head. "They can call us whatever they like, we're just going to do our jobs."

"Piffle," Scott commented, "you'll end up with something horrible."

"Like Ant-Man?" Bucky suggested in a dry tone, but his eyes held a smile.

"Exactly," Scott agreed with a nod. "I kinda inherited that one, and it is accurate enough. How about The Dark Avengers?"

"God, no. The Avengers are Tony's now."

"You mean Ross's, don't you?" Bucky complained, a sneer curling his lips.

I shrugged. Both were accurate at this point. I gathered, thanks to the limited news I'd been able to absorb, that Tony wasn't too happy showing up to _help_ after me and my team had already arrived. The council that made decisions as to whether or not the Avengers should be deployed, stuck with their thumbs up their asses. I sympathized with the situation, but I had warned him. We simply went where needed. Didn't ask permission. Didn't demand. Just did our damn jobs and moved on.

"Well, if you don't pick something _they_ will and that asshat Ross with vilify you to every news outlet on the planet no matter how many people call you heroes." Scott paced around the room.

He _really_ wanted us to be the good guys again.

"Let him," I stated. "Deeds and not words will make the difference."

"A few more times late to the party and that UN Council might not exist any longer. Their effectiveness has been more than a bit… lacking." Bucky may have not been all that thrilled with being back out in the world, but once he'd decided to do this, to be the hero again, he hadn't looked back.

"So, your whole evil twin routine is gone?" Scott asked, real curiosity in his voice.

Bucky shrugged. "The programming is still there, but as of now the band-aid is holding."

Scott nodded. "Good. Good." He looked over the garage. "This would make a good training room."

I'd thought the same thing. With the quinjet we didn't require a lot of regular vehicles. If we needed some onsite we would… acquire them. "It will be, eventually."

"Eventually?" Scott inquired. "Don't you guys have to train? Okay, maybe not you two, but the others are normal humans right?"

"We're broke," Bucky grumbled, "and don't exactly have a way to earn funds."

Scott lit up like fireworks on the Fourth of July. "Froze your accounts?"

I nodded. "Yes, why?"

He grinned. "Oh, I can fix that for you." He spun about and was out the door a moment later.

I glanced at Bucky who looked more confused than I felt and we trailed after.

We found him in front of the computer, his fingers interlaced and flipped about, the knuckles cracking loudly in the quiet room. Then he began to abuse the keyboard, windows popping up across several of the monitors as he worked his virtual magic.

"Scott, what are you doing?"

"No way Captain America should be without funds, so I'm getting them back for you. Sam's too." He glanced over at me, "Wanda?"

"Uh, a stipend of some sort that Stark set up?" I answered. Stark had felt guilty enough over the Ultron mess that he'd paid for everything for Wanda, made sure she had her own money, though I had no clue how much.

Scott whistled. "Jeez, you could buy a small country with this." His fingers kept moving over the keys and, while I got that he had somehow managed to get to our money, I had no real idea how.

Part of me, the do things by the book part of me wanted to tell him to stop, that the government had frozen our accounts for a reason and that the law was the law and we had broken it, but…

But we shouldn't be punished for doing what we believed to be right.

So I let Scott keep going.

Less than twenty minutes later he leaned back in his seat and finished off the rest of the now cold cocoa. "All right, it's in a series offshore accounts that no one but you guys can touch. I put a portion aside to collect an absurd amount of interest so you'll have emergency funds. The rest will be available within twenty-four hours. I'll make hard copies of the passwords and such, but you guys should be good to go."

Bucky had taken over one of the other chairs, feet up on the desk a look of calm on his face. "Thank you," he said.

"No problem," Scott said with a nod. "Now, I'm am off to bed so that tomorrow I don't kill myself trying to fix the furnace."

I laughed softly. Once he'd left the room I turned to Bucky, who hadn't moved.

"Maybe we should have started with that," he pointed out, the banking pages still up on the screen.

The numbers there were impressive, but even I knew it would not be enough in the long run. "We need to expand our skills." I'd relied on others to handle the serious tech for too long. We no longer had Tony or Nat and while Sam and Wanda were far more tech savvy than either of us, I doubted they could have done what Scott had just accomplished.

"Into what? Counterfeiting?"

I chuckled. "Whatever works, I suppose. Sell calendars with all of us posing in our skivvies?"

Buck shifted, bare feet coming down to the cold concrete floor as he stood. His eyebrows popped up for a moment. "It'd sell well, that's for sure. Or you could go back to selling bonds. Money going to our pockets, of course. You'd fill those tights well."

"Never. Again."

"Never?" Bucky countered. "Tell me that when we run out of fuel and food. When Sam gets hurt bad enough to need a hospital stay. We have no protection. We have no support. We have nothing but this base with crappy heat and all the Hydra tech we-" He stopped dead, a look of realization on his face.

"Buck, what? What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Go wake Scott up. I have one hell of an idea."


	2. Chapter 2

A lot could change in forty-eight hours, this time we went from piss-poor ex-Avengers to having more money than we could lavishly spend in one lifetime. Not Stark level wealth, but more than enough to cover our expenses and then some. With care we could probably hire out whatever else we might need including R & D.

Bucky had had the brilliant idea to take possession of Hydra funds. They had to pay for their projects somehow, and that meant money, lots of money and here we sat in the admin hub of the entire organization. Little chance there wasn't paperwork on bank accounts, government funding, from a half dozen different governments, and other even more esoteric sources of money including seeming legit businesses.

Scott had given it all to us.

Every last penny.

And he'd done it with a glee that had been contagious.

We now had the proverbial keys to the castle, we just needed to figure out what we would be doing with them.

Sam and Scott had headed for the nearest town to acquire assorted parts to fix the furnace. He had discovered the power regulator was shot, which kept causing the breaker to flip and shut down the heat. Even I was starting to feel the cold. Poor Wanda had achieved a state just above utterly miserable and had taken sitting around the fire I'd rigged in an fifty gallon drum. I'd cracked the overhead door open to let the smoke out, which of course let cold back in, but she'd appreciated the effort.

I had gone back to my painting. The base coat for center star finished, I currently worked on the right wing. The white paint would take several coats to cover the black I'd hidden the Hydra symbol with.

I heard her walk into the room and settle back against one of the Jeeps.

"Wanda, you don't have to stay with us. You could go home. Start your life over. Forget all of this." I didn't turn around, just continued my painting while she considered my words to her.

"You think I can't handle a little cold?"

I shook my head. "You shouldn't have to, is what I'm trying to say." I glanced over my shoulder at her, wrapped up in a heavy winter coat that had been left behind by the former occupants, the Hydra patch still on the sleeve. Her dark hair a contrast to the ugly green. Her brow wrinkled in deep thought.

"Do you not want me here?" she asked with a quick glance up to meet my eyes.

Whoops. That had not been my intent. "Of course I do. We do, but… this is not an easy life and you'll be stuck here with three men who have no clue how to deal with a woman your age. You should be out with friends, going to college, living your life-"

"Saving the world?" she interjected. "And it's not like you got to live your life. You went to war younger than me and haven't really had a chance to live even though you've been around longer than all of us." She shook her head. "Except for Bucky, of course. The two of you have known nothing but war, if anyone should want out it would be you. Yet you are still here."

I sighed softly and set the brush down. I wanted to argue with her, but couldn't. No point in arguing with the truth. Part of me wanted out, wanted to settle down to a quiet life with good friends and nothing more to worry about than if I had time to get the lawn mowed before it began to rain. Instead I tried to fight a war I no longer understood. "I don't know how to be anything else," I told her in a soft voice, moving to settle beside her against the Jeep, the vehicle settling noticeably with my weight.

"A hero, a horrible thing to be."

I shook my head. "I'm no hero. I'm just a kid from Brooklyn who didn't like bullies."

"And look where that got you," Bucky said as he walked into the room, feet bare on the surely icy cold concrete. He yawned hugely, rubbing the back of his head with one hand.

"You stay up all night again?" I questioned. We'd been running in shifts, kind of, it hadn't been planned, but it made sense just in case we were discovered, we'd have some warning and possibly have the chance to get out.

He shrugged. "Insomnia. Since I can't sleep, I pace. But I got a ton of those letter combinations recorded for Lang." He glanced over at Wanda. "You eaten yet?"

She shook her head. "Didn't feel like making anything and we're out of real milk. That powdered crap just does not work for me."

"Spoiled, so very spoiled," Bucky complained, but with a grin.

We'd been lucky to get powdered milk back in the day. Real milk had been a luxury to poor folks like us, once the war had come milk had been a rare treat indeed. Usually after hijacking a cow in need of milking and a helmet clean enough to put the goods into. I mentally went over what we had in stock and determined bacon and eggs might be the best bet.

She just shook her head, not about to compare war stories, not yet. "Are the memories cohesive or still jumbled together?" she asked, making me start in surprise.

It had never occurred to me that Bucky might be able to talk to her about the mess his mind had become. Though, I suppose, there was some small similarity in their stories. Both used by the bad guys only to make an effort at redemption. Hell, they had both worked for Hydra, though she'd been a bit more willing.

It still irked me that we'd basically given that damn scepter to Hydra to play with. That we had essentially been the cause of Wanda becoming who she was today. Responsible for the loss of her brother who had given his life to save Clint and young boy.

"Mixed up still. I write down what I can, but I'm still trying to sort out what goes where," he shrugged as he encouraged us out of the garage and led the way to the kitchen.

I glanced at Wanda who had a serious look on her face. "When you are ready I will be happy to help. It may not be pleasant though."

He snorted in clear derision and held open the door for her. "They're not pleasant now. Little I did as the Winter Soldier could be considered a pleasant experience. I need to be able to know which memories are which. I have this one where I'm with him," he hooked a thumb at me, "at some snow covered mountain about jump on a moving train, but then I'm in the middle of the street being called Bucky and not having a clue who that is." He rubbed his face with one hand as he made his way to the sad excuse for a coffee maker.

Had to admit I missed the Keurig. So much simpler to use and so many options for coffee.

Then his descriptions registered. "Shit."

"What?" Wanda's brow knit again.

"Just the mixed up memories are essentially the last time he saw me as Bucky and the first as the Winter Soldier. We think that when I called him by name that day it cracked the programming."

"Ah," she muttered, not sure what to do with that information. "Did you remember Steve while you were the Winter Soldier?"

"I don't… know?" Bucky responded in confusion. "They essentially wiped my mind the moment I woke up so I didn't exactly get a lot of quality time being me."

And yet me calling him by his real name had been enough to break it, destroy the memory wipe and damage the mortar holding the Winter Soldier in place. He had some twenty-ish years of solid memories prior to his induction into Hydra and becoming the Winter Soldier. That followed with intermittent times awake and under the control of the programming, the memories still his, but separate in some ways from those of Bucky.

"Dreams," I suggested, getting odd looks from both of them. "Could you have been dreaming while frozen?"

"Possible, I suppose, but if I did I don't remember them..."

Well there went that shot in the dark. "Well then maybe you're just one stubborn son of a bitch."

That got a snort of amusement from Wanda. "Oh, that is a certainty. It will take time, I'm afraid. Your mind has been broken down many times, layers on top of layers. Peeling each one away will not be easy."

"And the layers do not necessarily match. I don't think they meant for me to remember any of it. I feel like a bad hard drive after years of use. Programming on top of programming, ghosts of of Christmases past piled on top of each other." He shook his head. "Might be better to wipe it all and start over with a clean slate."

"No, it wouldn't solve anything. Scott is right, you need to own it and move on."

"I know," Bucky agreed, "but right now I'm a jumbled mess in here. And sometimes…"

"Sometimes what?"

"He triggers," Wanda explained poorly. "He'll be doing something and a memory will come forcing him into a fight or flight situation." She frowned, clearly having either witnessed or experienced one of these moments. She tipped her head to the side watching him with care. "Sometimes _he_ is no longer there."

Okay, that could be bad, especially if he were trying to complete a mission when out of sync with reality. "That's why you were raiding the medical stores. You were looking for tranqs." I leaned back against the counter, breakfast forgotten. "You do realize how high the dose would need to be to even slow you down."

"Yeah, I do, and I still went looking. I can't guarantee I won't wake up one morning wanting to complete my mission to kill you, I wanted a back up that would put me down long enough to get my head straightened out."

Like that cage Fury had built for the Hulk on the helicarrier. Though I now doubted it could have contained him for very long. Bruce's alter-ego had to be one of the toughest beings I'd ever seen and that included demigods. Even Thor had been impressed with the sheer power of the Hulk.

I'd managed to fight the WInter Soldier to a draw, barely. I mean I could probably kill him. A bullet to the head would stop him permanently, but I did not want to do that. Did not want to have to put my friend down like a rabid dog.

And yet here he was telling me, if obliquely, that I might have to do that very thing.

"Buck, it won't come to that-"

"You don't know that. I sure as hell don't know that. Two years to get my head almost on straight and Zemo goes and fucks it all up in one afternoon." He stalked away. "You should've just let them shoot me," he muttered, shoulders tight and head down.

"No," Wanda argued. "Oh god no, then Steve would have decided to go all vengeful on them. And that would have been much worse." She gave me a wink to ease the sting of the statement.

Buck twisted about a hard look on his face. "You might just be right about that. Look at what he did just to prove my innocence."

I didn't want to even think what I could have done if Bucky had been killed that day at the hands of the so-called authorities. I might have laid waste to the entire city in my anger. Look what I'd done to Hydra for killing him back in the war. I'd destroyed them, wiped them off the map. Yeah, I know in reality they'd just gone into hiding, but I had been the one to do that. Me and the Howling Commandos.

I'd warned Stark that I had a dark side, he most certainly hadn't enjoyed seeing it. I doubted others would either.

"I hope one day to earn such a place in his life."

I turned to her in surprise. "What makes you think you haven't?" When I'd broken them out of the Raft, those there were lucky I'd just knocked them out once I'd seen the way she'd been held. And then to find out Stark had visited and left her like that? Well, there were days I was damn glad he hadn't called for help. Not that he had much influence with Ross at this point. He could retire, I supposed, then Ross would have no powered people to play with, since I doubted Vision would go anywhere without Tony and Rhodey was down for the count. That left… no one I was aware of unless they'd found Banner or Thor had come for a visit. He would laugh his ass off at the Accords and anyone thinking he could be bound by mortal law.

"Steve, I do appreciate that you think so, but while you care about me you don't love me the way you do him."

Bucky shot me a look full of meaning that I could not translate, but I did not argue with Wanda. Can't argue with the truth. I would go to the ends of the earth for Bucky, even this Bucky who didn't remember who he was from one moment to the next, and all because he was the one person I cared about most in the world. Hell, he was the last person left who had known me before the serum and who had liked me then. He reminded me of who I was in a world I didn't yet understand and that had decided that it no longer wanted me. Those in charge of it, anyway.

But then people always did fear what they couldn't understand or control.

And I hadn't yet given them a reason to really fear me. Let them come after us and _then_ they would see what it meant to be afraid.

"Give him time, kid, he'll back you with everything he has." Bucky stated, looking at me and I gave a slight nod to show him I agreed. "Now, breakfast, I'm starving."

Wanda grinned, though it did not touch her eyes. "All right, but I'm cooking. You will just burn the bacon."

I didn't argue as I had done that on other occasions, as well as badly overcook the eggs, and backed away from the stove with my hands raised in surrender. "Hey, how about you show us. Might as well learn to fend for ourselves at some point in time."

She cocked her head, eyeing me, then nodded. "Fine. Eggs and bacon if you would."


	3. Chapter 3

We'd been fully up and running for a couple of months now and had hit a half dozen Hydra bases in between our more humanitarian efforts, though those had become harder for all of us to deal with. Earthquakes and forest fires and floods happened all the time while we mostly went to deal with the most severe, where the local services were stretched to the max and our shoulders would do some actual good.

The bombings, with blatant Hydra style tech had continued.

We'd helped where we could, but the attacks were all across the board, from buildings to religious centers to train derailments with no one claiming to be the perpetrator. What worried me is that no seemed to be able to prevent them. Every country on the planet had an anti-terrorism team, plus the JCTC that Sharon worked for, somehow remaining in Germany even after everything.

You'd think one or all of them would have some clue these attacks were coming, but they seemed as in the dark as the rest of us.

Not once did we encounter the Avengers.

Plainly, they'd been hamstrung by the Committee, just as I had predicted. Made useless by red tape.

I had to wonder how many of these events Tony had sussed out and warned them about only to be ignored.

Hell the tech gave off a unique energy signature, no reason they couldn't rig up a machine to track it and maybe, just maybe keep a few more from being killed. Sucked into oblivion by the violent, if short-lived, implosion.

We had grown tired of being behind the eight ball. Of showing up too late to do anything but clean up the mess and console the survivors.

What happened to Iron Man privatizing world peace?

I'd nearly called him a couple of times to find out just what the hell he'd been doing only to stop myself, not wanting to widen the rift between us.

We'd had more success with the Hydra bases, though not by much. We'd started at the Siberian base, only to find it cleaned out, not so much as a speck of dust to be had. Several different someones had been in there so there was no way to know where the tech and all the data had ended up. We had some of the data as, while primitive in comparison, they had been online and we'd accessed the computers through the satellite links, copies stored in the skies high above the earth. Information useful towards creating more super-soldiers, some of the missions, enough for me to realize that the couple dozen assassinations Nat had been aware of had been a drop in the bucket.

And that bucket could swallow an ocean or three.

I hadn't told Bucky what I had learned, but I now understood better his confusion with all the memories. The fact that he remembered everything, especially those he had killed made me want to pity him, but he held tight to the person he wanted to be and fought for every bright moment.

Today we were en route to an oil refinery that had broadcast a mayday a few hours ago before it had been cut off abruptly. Thanks to Scott we had access to some eyes in the sky and Sam had gotten us a live feed of the rig in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico just in time to see an explosion go off.

"Gear up," had been my only words, as if there had been any doubt we would attempt to assist. If nothing else we could probably rescue any survivors before the whole thing went down into the ocean.

And now here we were hovering over the platform, upwind so that we could see the destruction clearly. Even with the quinjet it had taken time to get here and I feared we might be too late.

"There," eagle-eyed Wanda pointed, "three on the helipad."

"I see boats in the water too," Sam added, hitting the release for the rear door. "I'll head for them and see if they can hold on for now."

"Go," I waved. "Buck, land where you can. Wanda see if you can keep the fire at bay long enough for us to get them on board."

The fires seemed to be concentrated on the side opposite the helipad, which, while convenient, also nagged at me. I did not notice an oil slick, burning or not on the water, which meant the pipeline probably had not been damaged. And while items on the platform would indeed be combustible, they were usually kept to a minimum for this very reason. A fire this far from rescue put every person on board at risk.

"Bucky, make certain the Coast Guard has been alerted and keep the engine running."

He snickered, but nodded. "Idle it is."

I felt the gentle thud of us setting down; Wanda and I out the back the moment we stopped moving. I charged out into the hot sunshine, regretting black as the uniform choice right about now, but glad when the goggles darkened all on their own, dimming the bright light while also giving me a crisp clear view of everything.

A group of three disheveled men huddled at the far end of the helipad, all looking injured to one degree or another. Wanda moved closer to the fire, intending to try to snuff it out, though how would be dealer's choice, the steady breeze would probably be too much to allow her to draw off the oxygen, but trapping the fire within one of her shields might just work. Long enough, at least, to give the place a cursory search for others.

I waved the threesome to the quinjet and they came willingly enough, scuttling quickly, eyes wide in shock and surprise.

"Anyone else still on board?" I shouted over the roar of engines and the fire, which Wanda seemed to be quite effectively dampening.

"Don't know. We got cut off from the escape ladders. Came here in hopes someone would show up."

I nodded. Bucky handed them water and blankets as they climbed into the jet and settled down in seats.

"Sam, sit-rep," I requested.

" _Two boats, some minor injuries, they say everyone is accounted for._ "

"Repeat?"

" _Everyone is accounted for. Minor injuries only,_ " he repeated.

I spun about in time to see the three we had _rescued_ stand, shedding the blankets as they did so, and pull weapons from the pockets of the coveralls they were wearing.

"Bucky, look out," I snarled as I grabbed him by the arm and yanked him clear.

The weapons fired, a distinctive blue glow to the discharge I noted idly, and I suddenly felt like I'd been set on fire. Not Hydra weapons thankfully or I'd be very dead, but tasers of some sort, similar to Nat's Stings.

Hurt like a son of a bitch and put me down on the floor twitching and trying not to bite my tongue in reaction.

"Shit, wrong one," I distantly heard one of them say and then Bucky stood over me, angry as could be and all but roaring his displeasure at them. Two punches and an assist from Wanda and the threesome were down for the count as I was just beginning to want to rejoin the proceedings.

Sam appeared then, weapons at the ready. "What the hell?"

"A trap," I got out as my diaphragm finally unclenched.

"For who?" Sam asked, poking one of the men with the toe of his boot.

"Him," Wanda waved at Bucky from where she squatted next to me. "Are you all right?"

"Ow," I grumbled, but managed to roll to my side, everything aching and feeling like I just grabbed a live wire, which made sense. I looked down to see the three… darts for a lack of a better description stuck to various points of my chest. "Who the hell are they?"

Sam and Bucky had moved to begin searching them when something hit the platform and an explosion went off nearby.

"I think they had back up," Sam pointed out, then dashed back out the door and into the air.

Bucky surged to the pilot's seat and got us into the air just as something hit the side of the quinjet. "Two bogeys. I don't recognize the tech. Look similar to single man quinjets. Like the Wakanda ones, but no identifying marks."

Great. And they were after Bucky. And not to kill, but capture. Groaning I got to my feet, one hand pressed against the ceiling to keep steady. "Wanda, secure them. There should be restraints in the third compartment."

She nodded, grabbing at a harness to keep her feet as Bucky took us into a half roll to dodge another shot that I heard scream past the hull of the ship.

I managed to get to the co-pilot seat without being banged about too much. "Sam, you good?"

" _They're armoured, my rounds ain't doing much but letting them know where I am_ ," he informed us; the words accompanied by the sizzling sounds of non-standard weapons fire zinging past him.

"Get undercover, we'll take 'em down."

" _Roger_."

"We will? If his rounds ain't doing any good…" Bucky trailed off as I looked back at Wanda, who had just finished shoving the last one into a seat with her powers, wrists and ankles zip tied into immobility. They appeared to still be out cold.

"Do you want them dead or disabled?" she asked, head tipped slightly to the side.

I shrugged, my entire upper body aching with the movement. "Disabled by preference, but I won't be mad if it doesn't happen."

Bucky gave a grim smile then snapped the controls hard to the right and up, executing a tight turn that surprised the hell out of the pilots of the other craft. One peeled off while the other came straight at us. A mistake as Buck held our ship steady so Wanda could do her thing.

Red light shot out and engulfed the jet, stopping its forward movement. She did something and the blue glow that had appeared under the red flared blindingly bright for an instant before dying. She squeezed, the wings folding in upon themselves, leaving only the cabin intact before slamming it down into the water with seemingly no effort at all on her part. "One down."

Bucky chortled. "I like your style, kid."

" _Other one's trying to get away_ ," Sam informed us over the comm. " _Your three o'clock._ "

Bucky whipped the quinjet about to see the other one streaking away. "Do we chase?"

I shook my head. "Let him go. Our first concern is the crew of the rig." I wanted to go after him, wanted him smashed into the water for going after my friend, but a twenty man crew took precedence. "ETA on the Coast Guard?"

"Uh, an hour or two," Bucky answered after a brief conversation with the cutter en route. "They are requesting we remain on site to assist until they get here."

"Done. Let's see if we can get the fire out and the crew back on board instead of drifting at sea till then."

" _A plan_ ," Sam commented. " _I'll let them know and get them to the undamaged side of the rig. Plus it looks like the fire is dying out all on its own_."

Which meant it had been superficial. Bait to get us here and give them an opportunity to get to Bucky. They knew we wouldn't be able to resist trying to save the crew, knew those trapped on the platform would come first and that we wouldn't see a betrayal coming.

We'd been idiots.

 

We got the fire out, the crew back on board and waited until the Coast Guard had arrived before turning to the three now conscious and unhappy gentlemen tied up in our quinjet. We'd taken anything of use from them, looked for identifying marks, like the Ten Rings tattoos, to give us a clue for whom they worked. Given they hadn't committed suicide once realizing they'd been caught we were reasonably certain they were not Hydra, either that or the more recent training had been lacking in that die for the greater good clause.

They gave us nothing.

"What the hell are we going to do with them? We're not exactly set up for prisoners at the base," Sam muttered in an aggravated whisper.

"Give them to the Coast Guard like their pilot friend?" Wanda suggested.

Yes, the ball of jet had somehow survived the fall and the pilot had bailed, only to be rescued by the Coast Guard. We'd warned them that he had been one of those to set the fire on the rig and that had been enough to get him slapped in chains for the boat ride home.

"No," Bucky said with a shake of his head. "They'll be loose in hours once on the mainland, if not sooner. There's no guarantee the other one won't just attack the Coast Guard ship to get them back.

I winced. I hadn't thought of that at the time. Guess it would depend on how valuable they found their people. Might not care in the least that we have them simply because they were too far down the food chain to know anything of real value. Grunts sent out on a mission that would not be missed if they failed.

"We can't just cut 'em loose. One getting away is bad enough," Sam groused, but even he knew the innocents came first no matter what.

I rubbed the back of my head, not liking that I still hurt. I couldn't wait to get back and see the damage those taser things had done to me. "Agreed. And they have information, we just don't have the time or the facilities to get it out of them."

"Or the lack of morals," Bucky pointed out, fingers of his metal hand tapping a rhythm on the dash, "I mean a few broken fingers might make them a bit more willing to answer our questions."

I caught the flinch of one of them out of the corner of my eye, and while I did want answers, I did not want to have to torture it out of them. I knew Bucky would do it for me, gladly. Wanda would willingly mess with their heads to get what we needed from them, but as usual I had to set the example.

"Well, someone needs to figure out who they are so we can maybe keep them from trying to grab him," Sam waved vaguely over at Bucky, "again."

"Are they after Bucky or The Winter Soldier?" Wanda questioned, and I had to wonder that myself.

"I guess that depends on who you ask," Bucky responded voice soft, "and what they want me for."

A fair bet would be they wanted the Winter Soldier. Though I supposed it could be possible they were government agents of one stripe or another taking a chance to capture the infamous WInter Soldier to bring him in, though none of them struck me as having legitimate reasons to capture Bucky. "What if we turned them over to someone who has the time and resources to figure out who they are and what they wanted?"

They all looked at me like I had gone just a touch insane.

"Who?" Sam asked, taking the sword for the rest of the team.

I grinned. "Oh, I know just the place."

 

~^~^~^~^~

 

Tony had not been overly thrilled at the present we'd quite literally left on his doorstep.

Knowing that at least Vision would be in residence we dropped the restrained and gagged threesome off at the Avenger's Compound in upstate New York. Complete with a note explaining where they'd been caught and what they'd been doing. Along with the suggestion that it might behoove someone to figure out exactly why they were after one James Buchanan Barnes before someone else had a go at him.

We'd been back on base for two days before I realized that there was a message on _the phone_. Not a text like last time, but an impressive rant about forcing Tony to do our dirty work, which wouldn't be necessary if we'd just sign the damn Accords and play nice.

Then came a long pause followed by a heavy sigh and a "Is everyone okay?" As if he might actually be concerned about Bucky's well-being. I figured it was more Wanda he was asking after and possibly more for Vision than himself, but still, I gave him a B- for effort.

I texted back, not certain we could actually speak to one another without it turning bitter quickly. _We're all good. Keep us in the loop if you can._

The reply that came a few minutes later seemed grudging at best. _No promises._

I got it. I did. His hands had been tied and once he had turned them over to whomever he answered to and had the power to do something with them it would be out of his hands.

At this point I'd take grudging agreement over silence. We were communicating, but the wounds were still raw and oozing blood. I mean, let's be real, I doubt Tony would lose an instant of sleep if Bucky ended up dead at the hands of… of anyone, really. That said I doubt he had any interest in seeing The Winter Soldier activated and doing his work again. Didn't matter for whom, there could be nothing good to come out of having absolute control of one of _the best assassins on the planet._ I wouldn't trust the US government with Bucky, never mind, say, oh, the Russian president. T'Challa, maybe, but only because I knew the man lived and died by his honor.

And yet…

Yet, I could see him choosing the lesser evil of using Bucky if extreme push came to violent shove.

Damn it. I just got my friend back and now it looked like he'd have been better off on the run. This place, our base wasn't so bad now, but it would end up being just as much of a prison as the Hydra base he'd been kept at for all those years. We needed to figure out who was gunning for him and why.

Then we needed to stop them, in as permanent a fashion as possible.

The programming was only blocked, not removed. And from what I had been able to research it might not be removable. In many ways, Bucky had spent more time as the Winter Soldier than he had as James Barnes and some days it showed far more than on others.

I sat with my feet up on the desk, watching the feeds and thumbing through files to decide which Hydra location we would investigate next. Those shock discs I'd been hit with were new and of no known manufacture. I'd called in a favor or two, giving one to Scott and Pym to play with and while they had agreed there were hints of Hydra tech in them, they clearly were not associated with the tesseract that had been used to power the Hydra weapons during the war.

Yet, that implosion in Prague had clearly shown all the earmarks of Hydra tech. I wondered if it would be worth contacting SHIELD to see if any of the remaining Phase II weapons had magically begun working even with the tesseract off world.

I feared someone had figured out how to mimic the tesseract power. Or worse had created a new one.

Vision had the mind gem, so worldwide mind control should be off the table given he'd picked up Mjolnir within moments of… being born. But I had no idea if the tesseract could influence the holder of the gem.

That would be a question for Thor who had yet to return from Asgard.

The tesseract had been studied for decades and, as far as I knew, have never been truly understood other than a source of power. However, that did not mean it could not have been recreated by accident or design.

We needed access to the weapons, or at least the reports, for me to even have a vague idea of what they were.

I checked my watch, it was late, but not that late in the grand scheme of things and so I sent a text to Scott. If he were busy I'd try to figure it out on my own, but he could probably speed this whole search up. We had access to all sorts of nifty things, including databases that probably would have made SHIELD envious, but clearly none of us knew what we were doing if we couldn't figure out who had the damn tech.

_Yo, Cap, whatcha need?_

_Help finding who has those weapons. We can't find any commonality to the attacks aside from the weapon._

_I was wondering when you'd ask._

There was a long pause then, _Sending you a link. I've set up an account for you guys. I would recommend observation only for now. I doubt you can lie online any better than in person._

An email showed up in my inbox and I clicked the link as requested. It took me to a website that I did not recognize and for an instant I feared I'd been pranked and this would turn out to be a dating or porn site.

Instead it was a message board of some type. I glanced at the web address, noting it as a fake immediately so I had to wonder why Scott had sent me here.

_What am I looking for?_

_Read some of the posts, especially those by whosagoodboy. Guy must be a fan of WTNV._

I had no clue what a _WTNV_ was, but I found the screen name and clicked on one of the conversations. He used euphemisms, but it was clear even to me he had come across some kind of serious tech and had been selling it to the highest bidder.

_What the hell is this place?_

_Captain, the language. Dark web. You can quite literally buy anything and everything here. Including what I would guess is your Hydra tech. Oh, and make requests. There's a lot of interest in your friend, some death warrants, but mostly requests for services._

Shit. _You're telling me someone is trying to find Bucky through these message boards?_

_Succeeding from what I gather. That oil rig explosion. Check out user anythingforabuck._

I did, and could only be glad his plan had failed. _Who hired him?_

_Not a clue, but he's not the only one to think about having a go. I'll send you links as I discover more. You need to be careful. These guys may not be Hydra or enhanced, but it doesn't mean enough of them won't take you down._

_We aren't going to hide._

_I know, which is why I said be careful. Have fun trolling the boards._

I spent several hours doing exactly that and quickly worked out what the various codes were and found myself wondering how far SHIELD and the Avengers had looked for info. I suspected deeper than this, but since I had never been involved with that side of things…

Research in a general sense was nothing new to me. Scouting locations before going in was simply good tactics. These days you could do it from a distance thanks to computers and satellites, which did permit an element of surprise that scouting in person potentially took away.

I had relied on others to handle the fact finding, which had led to issues in the past, like the those that had arisen when the Lemurian Star had been taken by pirates. Plots within plots within plots. And thanks to the hits put out on Bucky we would now need to take precautions before heading out on any rescue missions. Granted an earthquake would probably be legitimate, but anything other than natural disasters would be suspect.

With a sigh, I stood and walked away from the computer, leaving the files behind for now. I wanted the others to have this new information before we chose another base to raid.


	4. Chapter 4

This time I ran into Bucky late at night.

Only Bucky did not seem to know me.

I found myself in a surprise choke hold, thankfully his real arm wrapped about my throat and not the metal one, I'd been grabbed by the throat twice now with just the hand, I did not want to think about the pressure he could put against my throat with the full arm. He did the smart thing and leaned back, forcing me to arch and keeping me off balance. He locked my left arm behind my back with his, leaving me with only my right free, and had no idea if it would be enough to remove the arm from about by neck.

I knew how strong Bucky was, but lack of air was quickly darkening my sight.

I tensed, preparing to do whatever I could to break his hold, when he leaned forward to speak directly into my ear.

"Why have I been woken?"

I froze.

I tapped the arm, unable to answer without air. He eased the hold only slightly, allowing me to draw in a strangled breath. "Bucky?"

There was a breathless pause, as if the entire universe had stilled for an instant, then he echoed, "Bucky?" sounding confused.

"Who are you?" I asked, suspecting the answer that I would receive.

The hold on me eased a bit more as he processed the question and tried to come up with an answer. "I am no one," he finally answered.

The arm had gone slack and with care I stepped out of his hold and turned about to look at him. Dressed in sweats and a compression shirt, padded half gloves on his right hand he stood there, feet bare on the cold floor of the hallway. The look in his eyes oddly blank.

"No, you are James Buchanan Barnes." I watched his reaction with care and after a moment realized that he might not actually be awake.

He shook his head. "No. He is dead. Only I remain."

Okay, not good. "Who am I?"

He met my eyes, his narrowing as he tried to match my appearance to one in his jumbled memory. He shook his head. "I don't know."

So this memory must predate him being awoken and given me as his mission. Still, I couldn't just let him walk out of here while stuck as The Winter Soldier. Who the hell knew what might happen or where he might go. I had no idea which memory he had fallen into, but I doubted any of them had a happy ending for his targets or him. Just another mind wipe and sent back to cryo. Not much of a life for one of the best men I had ever known. Even my life, where'd simply slept the years away, had been better. I'd missed a lot, but had not been used against my will.

And now those memories would not leave him alone, appearing at random moments to offer distraction from the job at hand, even if just washing dishes, to now, where his sleep had been co-opted by an echo, a false image of himself, perverted and twisted into a parody of the human being that had once been James Barnes.

Not certain how to get through to Bucky I tried, "Mission report."

He opened his mouth to speak, look turning inward as he tried to find the answer in his mind. "Assassination. Mumbai. Personal and bloody, but leave no traces."

Not one a recognized, but there were plenty of those. "Who?"

"Wife of the ambassador. Made to look like the rebels had done it." He took a sudden step back, shaking his head as if to toss the memories to the four winds. "No, that one has been completed."

I nodded in agreement. "Yes, soldier. Work well done. Perhaps to is time to rest?" I suggested. A mistake, treating him like a person and not an asset, as he shot a look at me that made it clear he knew I was not one of his handlers. I should have studied that damn Red Book more just in case something like this should happen.

"Who are you?" he demanded, going into an attack posture, prepared to charge at me and disable me so that he could get away.

I couldn't let that happen.

I moved first and clocked him a good one, slamming the side of his head into the wall with enough force to put him out cold.

Standing over him, feeling like shit for having to knock him out I sighed, "I'm your friend."

 

~^~^~^~^~

 

He came to a few minutes later while I fireman carried back to his room, my shoulder probably digging into his diaphragm. He twitched, grunted, then tapped me on the back to get my attention.

I lowered him to the ground and stepped back, watching him with wary eyes. He set one hand against the wall as he swayed at the shift of blood flow, the other to his jaw, a bruise already there. The other under the hair on the opposite side. I suspected the latter was the one that had provided the neural recalibration from Winter Soldier back to Bucky.

"I wish there were a better way to deal with that," he grumbled, not meeting my eyes for one second.

"You remember what happened?"

He nodded. "Maybe we should start locking my door from the outside." He shifted his back against the wall then slowly slid down until sitting on the floor. Knees pulled up , elbows atop them, hands curled about the back of his head. The frustration palpable.

"Won't work if you're not in your room," I pointed out, gesturing at the clothing he wore.

"Huh," he muttered, shaking his head as if to realign the memories into their proper order. "Maybe I don't remember."

I sat down across from him, back to the wall legs stretched out, toes inches apart in the wide hallway. "How long, Buck?"

He shrugged, still not looking up at me. "Few weeks after we got here. I figured… hoped they'd go away once we settled in."

I rubbed my face in my hands. I knew something had been up given the incident with Scott, but clearly had ignored any of the other blatant signs that had been thrown my way, else Bucky had been hiding them from me, not wanting to admit his mind had cracked further since coming here. Hell, even Wanda had mentioned it and I'd just gone blithely on without a care in the world.

Idiot.

"Did anything like this happen when you were in Bucharest?"

He shook his head. "No, just jumbled past memories. The only ones in a straight line begin when you called me Bucky on that street. The mind wipe they did after didn't really do much. You were there, stuck in my head, all this information there, but… not there. Like a word on the tip of my tongue." He sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair. "At the time it was easier to follow the programming than try to find the truth. Wasn't till I went to the Smithsonian that I started to believe."

That must have been an odd experience for him. Tipping the reality he'd known sideways, add in the memories I had stirred by insisting he was Bucky Barnes and I could just imagine the confusion that had overtaken him. To learn everything you had known to be wrong?

I could relate, a little, after discovering SHIELD had been Hydra all along. After learning that every good thing I had done in recent years had been for nothing. We'd saved New York for _nothing._ Had handed over the keys to the castle with a smile and had no clue we'd let the fox right into the henhouse. Hell we'd all but laid down and slit our own throats for them.

I had people to help me pick up the pieces and try and find my way in this brave new world. I would do the same for Bucky. Just needed to get him past this little issue.

Okay, major issue.

"Is the block still working?"

He grunted. "How would I know. It's not like I can use it on myself." He tipped his head to the side, wry smile on his lips. "Not that I've ever tried, mind you. That'd be twisted if I could turn myself into the Winter Soldier with just a few words."

I snorted, but there was little amusement involved. That was kind of frightening, actually, and essentially what was already happening.

"Maybe, we should try. Just to make certain the block is still in place."

"Yeah, but not tonight, okay. I really don't feel like being knocked out cold again today."

"Well, it's early yet, I'm sure we can find another valid reason to hit you in the head." I stood and reached down to offer my hand to assist.

He stared at it for a long moment, then slapped his right into mine and I heaved him upright. "Something's broken in me, he said, voice barely loud enough for me to hear.

I didn't disagree. Something had broken in him, even before I'd found him in Bucharest, but I doubted I could do anything to fix it. "They said blocking the programming might have side effects."

"Side effects? That's what you call this? I tried to kill you tonight. What if it had been Sam? Or Wanda?" Bucky sounded horrified at the thought.

"Wanda would have beat the shit out of you."

That earned me a startled chuckle. "Okay, yeah, she probably would have. But Sam is…"

"Just Sam," I finished. "We'll warn them. Make sure they understand what's going on."

He shrugged. "It's a start," he agreed.

"But?" I prompted.

"What if this happens on a mission? What if something sets me off and you end up having to choose between me and innocents. And don't tell me you'd do the right thing and save them first. I know you would drop everything to protect me… to save me. But this… this might just prove I'm beyond help. Beyond saving."

"It only proves that screwing with the mind is bad idea. It's just gonna-"

"-take some time," he butted in, completing my sentence.

Then again, I had said it on more than one occasion since he'd woken up. "We'll call the Doc in the morn- At some point when humans are normally awake and see if he has any recommendations. Have you been doing those mental exercises he suggested?"

Bucky ducked his head. "Made the dreams too vivid."

"Maybe that was the point. You have to remember to sort the memories out." I tapped him on the forehead with a single finger. "A jumbled mess won't cut it. Not anymore."

I lifted my chin, forcing him to see the bruises on my throat, which made him wince, but not apologize for a change.

"I'll try again, but we need a backup plan."

"You mean a cell." I did not like that idea at all, but feared it may come to that. Me locking away Bucky in order to protect everyone else. Bad enough he seemed to be getting caught up in the past memories, but if he were to become completely lost in one, one where he'd been nothing but the asset… And if others with less morals were to find out they could simply manipulate him. Convince him to continue his work as the Fist of Hydra and not care that James Barnes was being lost inch by inch in his own mind.

I'd hate to think that so soon after getting him back I'd lose him to the demons in his mind. A risk all of us lived with every day, admittedly, his were just a bit more prominent than most.

"I could just turn myself in, I suppose. I'm sure the UN would love to put me on trial."

I was sure they would too, but they'd be using him as a scapegoat and I wouldn't allow it. "You would take the blame for every evil Hydra has committed in the last century?"

Bucky stood there silent and not meeting my eyes.

"If it would let me atone for _any_ of the damage I've done, yeah, I just might." He turned away, heading away from the rooms, much to my confusion. I trailed after him, through the common room, and to the kitchen. We always seemed to end up in the kitchen when things went sideways around here. There was a dining hall attached, where the troops assigned here once ate their meals, but we generally sat around the counter, the kitchen admittedly huge, but the closeness of eating together what we were after.

Comfort food with comfortable people.

Yes, it lacked the conveniences of the Tower and the Compound, but I realized here and now that it hadn't been the tech, or the AI, or all the modern appliances, or the never having to lift a hand, but the people. The friends I had made since waking up from seventy years of sleep.

Bucky went straight for the walk in cooler while I settled on one of the stools along the counter. Well, it was what we called the counter. Once upon a time half a dozen workers had probably prepped food where we now took our meals.

He came back out with four beers and set them all on the counter before me. He opened all of them, pushed one at me and picked up another that he tipped up and drank faster than I thought possible.

"You do realize we can't get drunk, right?"

"Doesn't mean we can't try," he argued, then endeavored to drain the second bottle as quickly as the first.

I took a sip from mine, a halfway decent local brew Sam had picked up on his last run to civilization. "Then we need to find something a lot stronger."

Bucky snorted. "Could just make our own. We have plenty of room to set up a still or three."

I couldn't argue with that and could remember the stills we'd set up back in the day. Just because I couldn't get drunk didn't mean the rest of the Commandos didn't want to and they had, often. Christ, we had to have been one of the oddest group of soldiers to ever work together, but we'd fit and gotten the job done.

That's what I had been trying to duplicate here, though with not quite the success and that might be because I had become the one calling the shots. While lead in the field generally, there had still be others telling us where to go and the mission objectives. Someone else made the hard decisions that potentially got someone killed and while I had never been one to shirk responsibility, I now had it two-fold: behind the scenes and in the field.

No matter how many times I asked for opinions prior to any final decision, they all still looked to me to make it.

And suddenly I felt like a hypocrite.

Did I really want to give up our freedom to act? To give that power over to another and risk being used again?

No.

But…

But it had been easier.

That I could admit.

Following orders would always be easier, since I could pass the blame for anything that went wrong onto others.

But the only way to guarantee the orders would be the right ones would be to keep them in my hands.

But I had no way of knowing if my decisions would be the right ones until after.

And right did not equal successful as this last mission had proven.

And now Bucky, the one person I trusted most on this planet, could no longer trust his own mind, memories of horrors no one should have had to endure imposing themselves on his reality.

And here I was doubting my ability to lead them. Fearing any choice I made would be the wrong one and get one of them killed, or worse, captured. It didn't matter how times I had been right, just one wrong decision would end this grand experiment faster than one of those implosions were destroying buildings around the world.

"Buck, what do you want to do?"

He looked at me startled, lowering the third bottle from his mouth, this one half gone already. "Um, I don't know?"

"Do you want me to pull you from field duty for now?" It would be the wise move in some ways, but in others… It would mean leaving him alone and unsupervised. If he had another… incident there would be no one here to snap him out of it. Locking him in his room really not a viable option no matter how solid the doors or walls.

Even if he didn't break out it would damage his psyche even more than it already had been.

He shook his head slowly. "No, you guys need me out there, I have the most knowledge of the layout of Hydra bases, they're pretty consistent. Maybe… maybe lay off the rescues for a while."

I had to agree with that. "I doubt anyone would be foolish enough to start a major earthquake on purpose."

He snorted. "I would hope not. Seems a bit extreme to get to me." He paced around the big island, running fingers along the counter tops absently. "Focus on finding the weapons and getting them someplace secure."

I nodded in agreement. It was why we had taken that leap and left Wakanda after all. We had spent too much time sitting on their asses while whoever had those bombs kept using them. "I have some leads, thought we'd head out in a couple days."

He perked up at that. "Where?"

"Austria. Base predates the war, but there's been some chatter so I thought it might be worth checking out." There'd been a _lot_ of chatter, actually. Bragging would be far more accurate, but I had so far been unable to track down the real persons behind the screen names.

This blank look filtered into his eyes. I knew he had no fondness for Austrian Hydra bases, liked blowing them up into little bits. Last time he spent any serious time at one he'd been tortured, worked to near death on weapons designed to kill the Allies, and then experimented on. That would leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth.

"You're sure the weapons are from there?"

I shrugged. "Won't know for certain till we check it out."

HIs eyes narrowed. "Steve, I do not need some fluff mission to see if I'll break."

I shook my head. "Real intel, I swear it. Wait till you see the crevasse we have cross via shaky rope bridge to get there."

He rolled his eyes. "Fine, be that way." His head tipped to the side as he watched me. "Bring tranqs just in case. Have no clue what might trigger me."

"What? You tired of being punched in the head already?"

He rubbed his jaw. "Is that what you call a punch? Needs some work."

"Jerk," I muttered, inordinately pleased to see signs of my old friend in the man that stood before me. James Barnes still lived, but time and circumstance had changed him. Everyone changed, admittedly, but most don't end up with an assassin implanted in their brain.

"Punk," he came right back with, then rubbed the back of his head with his right hand as he cracked a serious yawn.

"Tired?" I asked.

"Unbelievably," he admitted. "Brain won't slow down though, so I punch things." He made a fist with the hand wearing the padded glove. He didn't really need them any more than I did, but it protected the bags somewhat. Maybe we should start wrapping them in kevlar, might hold up longer. I swear the biggest expense currently, besides food to feed this crew, was replacing workout equipment that we'd destroyed without meaning to.

"Well, I could hit you again. That'd get you a few minutes undisturbed," I offered, keeping my tone as serious as I could muster and resisting the need to grin like an idiot.

"You seem to have this fondness for punching me lately, give someone else a turn for a change would ya?"

He failed to look as admonishing as his tone would have suggested, so I just laughed softly. "Go to bed, Buck. Meeting at ten hundred or when everyone has gained enough consciousness to go over the mission specs."

"And what are you going to do?"

"Double check the intel and then crash for a couple of hours."

He came around the island and set a hand on my shoulder. "You can't do everything yourself, delegate. They have brains, use 'em."

He had a point. I had taken on the lion's share of work when it came to researching the Hydra bases, leaving the others, including BUcky, with very little to do. We had enough computers in various forms and the system more than versatile enough to accommodate all of us thanks to Scott.

Plus, we had all the Hydra data.

And I'd been trying to go through all of it alone.

Made sense to a point since I had to make the final decisions, but it left us with a ton of down time as I tried to plow through all the data. And now, with the new information I'd gotten access to…

I needed help.

It had taken me several days trolling message boards to figure out that "storehouse" being mentioned was most likely the Hydra base I wanted to check out next.

"I will," I decided then and there. Made a lot more sense to have each of them do research and then come to me with their choices and arguments as to why. More efficient too. And added that human element the data mining searches lacked.

Sometimes a gut feeling could be far more accurate.

Then why did I have the horrible feeling that things were about to get far worse for us.


	5. Chapter 5

It didn't take a genius to figure out that people had been here within recent memory, though they hadn't used what had ostensibly been the front door. Here dust lay thick and undisturbed, our prints the first to make impressions in decades at least. Like most WW II era bases it had been constructed out of solid concrete, the ceiling low enough in the side hallways that I wanted crouch even though there was actually plenty of headroom. According to the blueprints we'd accessed there were three entrances, one for vehicles of pretty much any size, one strictly human, and the other a literal loading bay, though the one foot wide solid steel doors had not been opened in so long I doubt they ever could be again. Not without explosives anyway.

In the hub of the building - only half of this place had been buried underground, a huge factory floor taking up a huge portion of the interior - we found the footprints that led to a collapsed section that had allowed whoever had found this place a way in.

From there it became a simple matter to follow the most prominent trails to the warehouse where the weapons had been stored.

"Cap, this place ain't Hydra," Sam stated from somewhere deep in the room.

I followed his voice to discover what he had found. "What?"

He gestured at the wall where instead of the Hydra symbol we all knew and loathed painted there was an older SSR logo. Post-war from the look of it, but still prior to SHIELD being created.

"There were Hydra logos in other locations," I pointed out. And there had been. A constant reminder of who had built this place and what they had ultimately intended to do with the weapons they built here.

"Not saying there ain't, but I'd say this means the good guys found the place at some point in time." Sam turned about looking over the room with a sharp eye. About half the racks were empty, though there was no way to tell when the items had been removed, some covered in undisturbed dust, others recently swept clean. We would do a full accounting later, for now we continued with the recon.

"Find the file room. There's got to be one in here somewhere," I directed. That would tell us more than a painting on the wall.

I chose a door at random once back in the hallway and found the lab. "Christ," I muttered under my breath.

"Problem?" Bucky asked over the comms.

"Maybe?" I responded as I wandered past tables on which still sat various bit of tech in various stages of completion. What had caught my eye was a computer, one created within recent memory and apparently still working. "There's power in here."

There hadn't been anywhere else in the building. I had sudden flashbacks to discovering the computer recreation of Zola at Camp Lehigh when on the run from Hydra. That too had been a Hydra base hidden within an SSR one. Could this be another? Had the SSR taken the base in the years after the war only to have it end up back in the hands of the enemy with no one the wiser?

I had to admit it to be very possible.

" _On our way_ ," Sam responded, followed by, " _Where the hell are you_?"

I wanted to laugh. I needed to laugh, but the churning worry deep in my gut kept me silent. I stepped back out into the hallway and got their attention with a whistle when I saw they all faced the wrong direction.

Moments later we were all staring at the computer, none of us quite willing to touch it. Sam had heard the stories and understood best my reluctance to wake the damn thing. I hated to think there might be another Zola copy out there, but it wouldn't surprise me over much.

The twisted mind behind the Red Skull would figure out how to survive death as many times as needed if it would allow him to further his and Hydra's goals. From the Internet he could probably revive the entire group with little or no effort.

I resisted the urge to pull my gun and shoot the damn thing.

Wanda followed the cables across the floor and through a wall. I watched her as she shifted a table and opened the door to another room. "Server," she informed us. "Modern tech. Someone has been keeping this place up to date."

We all trailed after her to see for ourselves. There were dozens of servers shoved into the room, all with blinking lights and humming softly with power. Bucky moved deeper into the room, choosing a stack at random and examining it in detail.

"This is Stark Industries tech."

I found that very hard to believe. Rather, I found it hard to believe that Stark would be involved with the bombings. Wouldn't be the first time his products had been used for purposes he ultimately didn't approve of.

I stalked back out to the computer sitting there innocently on the desk and hit the power button. I waited impatiently for it to startup, the default Stark Industries screen appearing to tease me while computer did it's thing. By the time it had fully started all the others had gathered around as well.

A screen with a blinking cursor, probably requesting a password appeared and I sighed in frustration. No way we'd be able to guess that without at least a clue or three about who had installed the damn thing.

"Son of a bitch," I snarled, certain that whatever might be on the computer would tell us who had figured out how to arm the weapons, but without some help we would not be able to get access to it. Fair bet safety protocols had been put in place to prevent it from being easily hacked. And it wasn't like any of us had that kind of skill. Maybe we could pack it up and take it with us?

"We're gonna need Lang to get into this thing," Sam grumbled. "We really need to upgrade our White Hat skills."

Wanda snorted, but did not argue. "We can't take all of it with us. Not in one trip, anyway. And if we don't shut down the system correctly it may destroy all the data."

"Options?" I requested. We could camp out here for a few weeks and try to figure it out, I supposed, but even I didn't think that sounded like fun.

"Ask for help," Bucky stated. "T'Challa said he'd assist, ask him."

I looked at Sam who shrugged. "Worst he can do is say no."

If all we needed was some tech help and transport he might just agree. He could want something in return, but we'd already told him we'd help whenever he asked so it wasn't like we'd be giving away anything we hadn't agreed to.

I nodded. "I'll call him from the quinjet. We still need to find the records room and to do a full accounting of the weapons."

"We'll get started. See if maybe we can get some power to the rest of this place so we're not stumbling about in the dark. Batteries get expensive after a while," Sam tried to sound irritated, but mostly failed. He turned to Bucky, "Think you can set that thing for _glow_?" He gestured at the cybernetic arm.

Bucky's reply involved the middle finger of that particular hand.

I shook my head in amusement. "Don't kill each other. Cleaning up blood is a pain in the ass."

"I'll make certain they behave," Wanda assured me, the serious face ruined by the humor in her eyes.

The two men glanced at each other, neither of them wanting Wanda to be forced to use her powers on them. They would play nice.

For now.

I made my way back out the way we had come to the quinjet sitting in the snow. Spring had come to other parts of the world, but not here yet. I walked up the ramp and settled into the pilot's seat with a sigh. This had gotten far more complicated than I had envisioned. We were only four, five if you counted Lang, but he had been needed in San Francisco, had family there, I would not drag him away from his home without real need.

No matter how much fun he thought it would be.

It took going through three underlings, which I had expected, before I spoke with someone with actual authority to talk to me.

" _Captain Rogers, how can I be of service?_ " the woman did not give me a name and the accent was only slight so I suspected her to be one of his personal guards.

"We need a favor," I began, only to have her interject before I could continue.

" _Of course. What is the nature of your need?_ "

Huh. I had expected to have to explain in detail what we needed and not simple acquiescence. "Has His Majesty given me a blank check?" I mused aloud and earned a snort of amusement.

" _Essentially_ ," she agreed. " _There are some requests that will be denied, but I am to facilitate any reasonable ones in an efficient manner_."

Interesting and most useful to know.

"Transport for a computer system including servers, weapons and possibly paper records." I told her. "We will need tech assistance with the servers to ensure the data is not damaged."

" _Are the contents known?_ "

A fishing expedition, but one I would bite the hook for. "Any relevant information will be shared with His Majesty," I assured her. If the contents were even close to what I suspected then someone I trusted would need to know about it. And right now T'Challa was pretty much it. Though if serious enough I might just let Tony know as well, especially given his tech had been used.

" _Fair enough. Your location? We will begin with a small team and they will determine the best course of action once on site_."

I rattled off the coordinates from memory then added. "Dress warm, it'll probably be snowing by the time you get here."

" _Thanks for the warning. First team should arrive within twelve hours. Should they bring provisions?_ "

I had no clue. Wasn't like we had found the kitchen yet. "Probably a good idea, sections of this place have not been touched in decades."

" _Understood. His Majesty sends his regards, Captain_."

I sat back in the chair feeling relieved. I'd been thinking we had to do all of this on our own. Fight these battles ourselves, but this call assured me that there were those still on our side. Who were willing to help if the cause were just. T'Challa had been far wiser than myself and prepared for the day we actually found what we had been looking for, unlike us. Four people and a single quinjet could never have been enough to transport even the weapons if we had found the cache.

We had money and each other, but not much more. I really needed… we needed to start thinking ahead, to be prepared for when we actually succeeded in one of our hunts. Next time we would be far more prepared.

Rising, I headed back into the base, planning how to protect the place while we waited for our guests to arrive.

 

~^~^~^~^~

 

It took the better part of a week to move everything and get the servers back online. Luckily we had plenty of space to store everything and the discretion of the Wakandan's to not reveal the location of our super secret base of operations. They had hated the cold and been more than happy to return home once the work had been completed.

They'd left us gifts at the end. Items that T'Challa had sent personally and with no more strings attached now than before. New tech, improved armor and weapons. All kinds of goodies.

For me…

For me he sent a new shield.

Painted matte black to match the uniforms we now wore and bearing the crest I had designed and that Scott had made copies of; patches we had added to the shoulders of our uniforms to show the world we were not Avengers. Not SHIELD. And, most certainly, not Hydra.

I looked forward to trying it out the next time we actually had enemies to fight.

That might be a very long time with the way things had been going.

Saving the world had become a task for the Avengers, not me and mine.

Though why we had been the ones to discover the cache of weapons and not them remained beyond my comprehension. Based on message board chatter we had indeed found said weapons and the seller plus all his buyers were not very happy about it. Still, a dozen or remained unaccounted for, which meant we had some serious work to do to find them before they were used.

Scott would be here soon to beat on the computer we'd brought back, in the meantime we would be going through the files and trying to figure out the damn weapons. If we could figure out how to turn them on, we might be able to shut others off before another building ate itself and all the people inside.

Sam and Wanda had gone off to fetch Scott leaving me and Bucky to man the fort, not that there was much to do. Sam might claim to not be a pilot, but he'd learned to fly the quinjet with ease. We rigged all kinds of security sensors about the place and would know of anyone coming in long before they got here. Plus, those eyes in the sky helped even if they had been created by Hydra, they still functioned and gave us a level of autonomy that I had never anticipated. Hell, if we had an AI, and the means to automate the base, we'd never have to lift a finger again.

I set up the search parameters and left the computer to do its thing without me. Yes, I could do the search on my own, but it would take me hours to plow through the data with sure to be limited success. The computer might generate some crap, but it would still find more useful information in a third of the time than I could manage.

I went looking for Bucky.

I found him outside, sitting on a ledge close enough to the waterfall that when the wind shifted just right blew spray in our direction. We'd found out the hard way you couldn't fly in the gorge, the winds too volatile even for the quinjet, so when we'd needed to plant some surveillance equipment we'd been forced to use climbing gear, something I hadn't done in decades. Wanda hadn't been able to assist given the only potential line of sight had been across the gorge, which was just as steep as our side and covered in trees and brush that resisted all but the most stubborn wildlife. No way we'd make her hike through that just to install a couple of sensors that would probably never be needed.

Of course, we'd had to go back and make adjustments three times, since the spray often generated by the waterfall would set them off, much to our annoyance. We found the ledge to have been man made and probably used as a spotter or sniper position at one time.

Bucky had this odd attraction with it and could be found sitting out there fairly regularly.

Today he had a notebook on his thighs, body practically folded over as he wrote in it.

I settled next to him on the cold rock, legs dangling out over the open air. I looked down, as I had on previous visits, the bottom a hundred or so feet below, water pounding straight down, bare bedrock on either side. The force of the water preventing anything from even attempting to grow there.

If you hit just right the fall could probably be survived, but the area the water had smashed to a depth of nearly thirty feet was only ten feet wide. A near perfect circle of safety that could easily be missed. An emergency exit only Bucky and I might ever think of using.

He lifted his head as I settled and watched me. "Sam back yet?"

I shook my head. I doubted he would have missed the sound of the quinjet returning even this close to the roar of the water.

"The fall probably wouldn't kill you, you know. You survived worse."

He snorted and shut the notebook, the pen marking the place he'd been writing. "Can't say I haven't considered that option," he admitted.

I figured, but hadn't wanted to push him into talking. The fact that he would be willing to turn himself in seemed to be pretty much the same thing.

Suicide by proxy.

Because they would kill him.

Maybe not cleanly, but they would.

A firing squad would be best. A direct heart or head shot should probably do it. Double tap to be certain, of course. One of each by preference.

We might not be able to die - science remained on the fence with that one - but I felt reasonably certain we could be killed.

No, they would show _mercy_ and force him to serve multiple life terms as he paid for the sins of others.

And they would _play_ with him. Test and experiment and try to figure out how he had been created. Try to determine what had made him the Winter Soldier. How he had survived that fall, broken and damaged, but able to be put back together.

The end would be the same: the death of Bucky Barnes.

Only this time at the hands of the supposed good guys.

Given those choices, I'd probably jump and do my damndest to land on my head, making certain that there could be no chance of being brought back again after.

And didn't that just make for a fun filled afternoon.

If I couldn't manage to keep myself from wallowing in depression how the hell could I pretend to think I might help Bucky?

"Anything interesting?" I asked, waving at the notebook and hoping to move the conversation onto less morbid topics.

"Old one," he answered, his gaze looking out over the gorge and not at me. "I recognized that base, just needed some time to get to the memory."

I blinked. I certainly hadn't, but it could easily have been uncovered after I'd gone into the ice and the back of Hydra broken. So I, of course, assumed (with all that word now entails) that it had to have been from when he'd been the Winter Soldier. Siberia may have been the main base, but even he had admitted to visiting others for various reasons, including the one we now lived in, though mostly to show off the Fist of Hydra to others. Other times they were used as a base of operations for his hits. Many of those had already been discovered by SHIELD or the Avengers, though the former had simply repurposed them, most, sadly, then going straight back into use by Hydra.

"From when?"

He tipped his head up, eyes going to half-mast as he stared up at the late winter sky. Spring might have officially happened according to the calendar, but you couldn't tell around here given the bitter wind whistling down the gorge and making rainbows with the spray from the waterfall.

"Long, long time ago. When I was with the 107th."

That made twitch. The memory an original one, before I'd made it to the war and found my friend. "After Azzano?"

He shook his head. "Before. I don't think it had been taken over by Hydra then." He shivered, though at the chill air or the memory I could not be sure. "I only remember bits and pieces, but I'm reasonably certain those weapon labs hadn't been there. In fact, there wasn't much to find. The staff minimal, as if they'd all been called away. We killed or captured the few Nazi's there and filed our reports when we got back to base."

"A sacrifice piece?" I suggested. Not a totally unreasonable tactic. Give up the minor to protect the major and if they had people watching they would be able to learn the tactics of the unit. And that… that would make them easier to catch or kill later.

Bucky shrugged and turned to look at me. "Not a clue. We'd done our job, what happened after… not like the grunts get told. Not like when we were with the SSR."

No kidding. After I'd proven the worth of a single super-soldier, we, the Howling Commandos, had gotten the pick of our jobs a lot of the time. The SSR hadn't fought Nazi's, we'd fought Hydra and that called for completely different tactics and skills from those that fought on the front lines against regular Nazis.

Unlike today. The war we currently fought had no face to it. No single soul we could point a finger at and place blame. We spent more time hunting through archives and doing searches online that anything else. Granted, when we did go out into the field the death and destruction still looked the same. Blood still ran red, no matter who had it had poured from.

"We need to get ahead of them, somehow," Bucky stated, and I could tell he'd been thinking long and hard about this. "There's bombs unaccounted for, yes?"

I nodded. "A couple dozen at a guess. I'm pretty certain I know who the seller is, but I have no way of knowing if he has them on hand, or had just been going back to that base and picking one up every time he makes a sale."

"And if they've already been sold? We have no clue when or where the next attack will come."

I sighed. I knew this, and had been doing the best I could trying to figure it out. "I can't tell the future, Buck. If there were a pattern to the bombings I'd be able to make a fair guess as to where the next one's gonna go off, but if there's sense to it, it's beyond me."

Bucky sat up straight at that. "Maybe the lack of a pattern is the pattern," he stated and got to his feet.

I glanced up at him, his work face set firmly in place. "Buck?"

He held out a hand to help me up. "I've got an idea."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to shout out my thanks to all of you who have read, left kudos, or commented. It is all greatly appreciated and spurs me to want to torture these poor souls in my custody even more. :D

 

 

We didn't have fancy VR projectors like Tony, yet, but we managed. Bucky had pulled up a world map and marked all the bombing locations in order, and that turned out to be quite revealing.

All within the same latitudinal coordinates. Not a single one below or above. Which by itself didn't mean all that much. Most within Europe or North America. Northern Africa had had one, as had China. Every major continent had been hit at least once, except for Antarctica and Australia. All had been in or near major cities, beginning in Prague, but not all had been buildings. Trains, a port - the bomb on a container ship - major metropolises, once an industrial park on the outskirts of a suburb. So far none had been in blatant rural areas. Or if there had we had no record of it.

It wasn't until he added other physical features of the areas that a pattern began to emerge.

And that's when I truly began to worry.

Individuals may have been purchasing the bombs, but it would appear they all had been working together.

Then he added the seismic overlay and the goal began to come clear. While only a few of the implosions had been near known fault lines, the singularity bombs had most definitely been felt deep within the earth and with a bit more computer magic we compared before and after images and were able to see how the ground itself, the very bedrock deep beneath the surface had twisted and warped from the power of the temporary gravity field that had been used.

We thought Prague had been about the UN meeting.

We couldn't have been more wrong.

"Holy shit," I muttered as I looked over the data generated at Bucky's command.

"Yeah," Bucky agreed, reaching for the cup of coffee he'd set down about an hour ago, if it wasn't empty it would be ice cold by now. "What the hell do we do with information? We don't even know how the damn things are powered." He foolishly sipped the coffee and made a face at the taste before setting the cup quickly down.

"Or who. Or why?"

"Well, based on these readings the why is pretty damn obvious," he pointed out, tone dry as dust.

Yeah, there couldn't be any other reason to shift tectonic plates on a scale this looked to be. And… and it explained the oddly increasing number of violent earthquakes that had been experienced around the globe. Honestly, the ultimate results would not do any lasting harm to the planet.

But to those who lived on it?

It could easily be another extinction level event.

Much like the one Ultron had tried to create.

I then had the horrible thought that part of him had survived. It would explain the Stark tech in that facility and the seeming effort to rip the planet apart. There'd been no sign of him in the years following, but if even a part of him had remained hidden within the 'net, slowly rebuilding himself… Well, I would definitely keep it in the back of my mind as we dug deeper into the buyers.

"Any chance we can predict where the next implosion will be?"

"With any accuracy? Maybe. The pattern appears to be consistent, so…" He tapped a few keys. "I'll run some scenarios and should have something in a few hours."

I heard the rumble that signaled the return of the quinjet. I clapped Bucky on the shoulder. "Get to it. I'll fill them in."

I stepped out into the hangar just as the quinjet settled onto the cracked concrete, the overhead door already closing. Minimal snow had fallen in this time. I so looked forward to the spring melt that would probably leave us with water everywhere in here. I needed to make certain the drains had been cleared within the next few weeks.

The rear door came down and Scott came out with Wanda at his side, chatting quietly, as the engines wound down.

Scott grinned and rubbed his hands together when he saw me. "Where's the new toy?"

Wanda laughed softly. "He's been asking me all kinds of questions the entire flight and not liking the fact that I had no answers for him."

"Well, none other than it's Stark servers, which doesn't tell me much of anything," Scott pointed out.

"Which is pretty much all we know with any certainty," I stated. "She gave you the file?"

Wanda nodded. "And the basics of where we found it and how we got it here."

I expected no less. Of all of us, she had grown up with this kind of tech and felt the most at ease with it so it made sense, to me anyway, that she be the one to communicate what we knew to Scott. "Good. Take him there and start some coffee. Meet back here in fifteen. We discovered something."

Scott's brow furrowed. At a guess my tone failed at be as neutral as I had intended. "Something I need to know?"

I shrugged. "Depends, did you mean it when you said you wanted in beyond being our personal Geek Squad?"

His eyes went wide in excitement, even as he tried, and failed in my opinion, to keep his look serious. "Anything you need, man."

I nodded, not surprised at his answer. "The one thing you need to know before touching that server is that it might be connected to Ultron."

Wanda sucked in a breath and shot me a pained look. Probably should have broken that a bit easier, but it would have caused her pain no matter how gentle my delivery.

"Are you certain?"

I shook my head. "No, but it could make his," I turned to Scott, "your job more difficult."

"The system is separate from yours?" he asked and I nodded.

"Yes. No direct connections, any ability to broadcast disabled as a precaution."

"Wait, was it broadcasting when you found it?"

"Yeah, but they could not determine to where since we could not actually get into the system." And they had tried, wanting to be able to properly shut it down prior to moving, but after six hours had given it up. The code or the encryption something they had never seen before.

"A challenge. I like those." He turned to Wanda rubbing his hands together in his enthusiasm. "Lead the way."

She sighed softly, but headed off to the hallway that would take them to the room we'd shoved the server in. I imagined I wouldn't see Scott again for at least twelve hours.

Sam came out then, what looked like a magazine folded in two in his hand and frown on his face. "Cap, we have a problem."

He slapped the magazine against my chest and I grabbed it before it fell onto the floor. He strode past me, probably heading to the kitchen. I unrolled the glossy slick paper to see myself on the cover. Shoulder to knee of my right side. I recognized the image from a photoshoot, of all things, that Tony had insisted on once we'd decided to go ahead with the Avengers officially. The uniform had been manipulated to mimic the one I currently wore. The black armor adorned with the logo I'd created, but across the chest instead of the shoulder. My shield, then the red, white and blue as it had always been, redone in matte black, matching the one I had so recently received.

Underneath were the words: Hero or Vigilante?

The rag wasn't one, half of the Newsweek header hidden behind my shoulder and upper body.

I flipped to the article in question to find a two page spread in the middle of all of us from various rescues we had done in recent months, including astonishingly clear shots from the oil rig.

Masked or not the world still knew who had been there.

The first blurb: Oil rig damaged in effort to capture the war criminal James Barnes.

I damn near crushed the magazine.

My fist curled tightly about the glossy paper I stalked to the kitchen to find Sam making a sandwich. He must have seen the thunderous look on my face. "I told ya. Stupid idiots blame us for the oil rig fire. UN is calling for Barnes to turn himself in."

"Won't happen," I growled.

"Hey, not saying it should, just filling you in. Now, that said, they also dragged the Council in charge of the Avengers through the mud for being ineffective and pretty much useless given we have our faces out there saving people while they have their thumbs up their asses."

I managed to unclench my fist, tossed the magazine on the counter and attempted to flatten it into a form that would allow me to read the rest of it. He glanced at it then up at me. He finished chewing, swallowed then said, "It's all over the 'net too. Figured that'd be safer."

I sighed heavily. "Yeah, I'd've punched the computer."

He nodded. "Exactly. What're we gonna do about it?"

"What can we do? They'd convict Bucky for _everything_ Hydra has ever done. Not just his unwilling part in it."

"Then we keep going as is. Let the world see who he _is_ and hope they forget what he _was_."

"You still don't like him much," I stated. He had been in the thick of it, assisted in finding Bucky, protecting him in Vienna, and then in Germany because of me. Not because he gave a damn about the man himself.

Sam shrugged. "Don't mean I won't back him one hundred percent. Even if he hadn't been involved I wouldn't have signed the Accords. You know that. And we still would have been forced to walk away from the Avengers. We might not be have been here specifically, but we still would've been trying to help the only way we know how." He shook his head and settled into a chair. "I know I can't compete with him. So I don't. I do think he's a weakness you don't need." He raised a hand to stop whatever I might have said. "I'm just gonna make sure they can't use him against you and that means sticking around."

I had no idea how to respond to that, especially when I had the bad feeling he was right. Bucky was my weakness and always would be, but so long as he lived it would remain that way. "Uh, thanks?" I finally said earning a snort from Sam.

"Someone's gotta keep your ass in one piece. What would we be without you?"

"Heros," I stated emphatically. "I don't think for one moment any of you would stop just because I had been taken out of the game." Oh, they would pause, they would mourn, they would think about walking away, but the instant they were needed they would get back up and do the damn job. They didn't need me for that, never had really, but apparently the mystique of Captain America could inspire people to do all sorts of crazy things.

I still couldn't decide if that were good or bad.

Maybe it just was.

I mean Captain America had become a myth, a legend given a life so grandiose that I, Steve Rogers, could never hope to live up to it.

And they followed me anyway.

Time for me to earn that, I supposed.

 

~^~^~^~^~

 

It took Scott two days, but he got into the computer and our fears had been correct, Ultron had claimed it at some point during his rampage, though he'd determined the servers had been there longer than that. The original purpose lost to Ultron having taken it over, so we were left with far too many unanswered questions. Ultron, one of his drones anyway, had found the weapons cache, determined a potential purpose and, to the best of our guesses, had planned to use them, an alternative to the dinosaur killer he'd turned Sokovia into. A back up plan of sorts, and I had to wonder how many others he had come up with. How many other caches he'd come across, figured out how to use and then abandoned when he'd decided on Vibranium as his weapon of choice.

There could be these time bombs all over the planet now, just waiting for some kid with delusions of being a supervillain to find and try just for shits and giggles. Hold the entire planet for ransom with just one of these weapons.

Scott had discovered no signs that Ultron still lived, just the unique code brought with him when created from the sceptre and mind gem.

Then… then I had Bucky show them what we'd discovered about the correlation of the bombings.

All Scott could say with certainty was that whoever had found the computer had to be at least as smart as him to be able to hack in and use the data there. Unless, of course, the computer had already been on when it had been found. All we knew was that someone had been following the plan created by Ultron to destroy the human race, whether or not they realized that to be the ultimate outcome, we had no idea.

And I feared we had limited time to figure it out.

"And we still don't know what those weapons are?" Sam asked, tapping a finger on the conference table.

I shook my head. "Not a clue. It's not like we've actually seen the implosion weapons being used. These just happened to be the ones we found at those coordinates." They looked like modified shells. Eighteen inches or so long, six in diameter, all kinds of fancy electronics inside, but no apparent explosives of any kind. We'd set up a work room on the far side of the facility from where we tended to congregate, not wanting to blow up the entire mountain should we screw up and set one of them off.

Trouble was nothing in them looked out of the ordinary. No strange power source, no obvious control system, or anything that could set them off. No odd emissions or radiation. In fact they looked incomplete.

I waved at the images on the display. "I suppose they could be modified to cause the implosions, but it wasn't done at that base. We cannot account for eight of these particular weapons, which matches with the requests on the boards I've been tracking. But I still can't be sure one has anything to do with the other."

"These are just shells. They need to be armed yet," Bucky stated, the same song he'd been singing since we'd begun tearing them apart.

"The plan to use them is in that server," Scott pointed out, "but you are right, the tech is far too primitive to create the implosions." He rotated and zoomed an image on the screen. "I'm not even sure this design is Hydra, the guts are mid-nineties, but nothing special." He switched images, looking at them in detail. "They could be easily modified to use in pretty much anything…" He looked up at me.

"Which is the problem."

He nodded in agreement. "A controlled implosion, which is what these are, is not an easy task. Creating a singularity, yes, comparatively, but the power requirements are enormous. No way around that. I can see why you would assume Hydra tech related to the tesseract, but there are other means."

"And they are?" Wanda asked, "Aside from a supercollider, that is."

He shrugged. "Not a clue. Not one with any certainty anyway."

"Wait, isn't that what happened to Pym Tech?" Sam questioned and it took me a moment, but I did recall hearing something about the building vanishing in an explosion.

Scott looked right at Sam, poker face firmly in place "Not sure what you are talking about."

Sam spun the tablet about, a crappy dash cam video showing the building explode outward for an instant before folding in on itself, shrinking until, in a blip of incredibly bright light, it vanished.

Wanda's eyes widened. "That was… impressive."

I met Scott's eyes, not even bothering to ask the question aloud.

He sighed heavily and muttered, "I thought they scrubbed all the vids."

Sam snorted. "Buried on some conspiracy theory site. Probably no way to get rid of every copy now. Though the one with the giant Thomas the Tank Engine seems to be the deal breaker."

"So why is that not an implosion?" Wanda asked for all of us, because to my eyes it certainly looked like one.

"That," he waved at the video, "is an unregulated infinite miniaturization."

I think the blank look on my face gave away the fact I had no idea what his answer actually meant.

"Without a regulator once you start to shrink you don't stop. The building simply shrank too small to see." Scott pulled up one of the implosions that had been recorded from a security feed. "This, is an implosion. There's a gravity field pulling in everything around it. To shrink you shift matter on a quantum level."

"Does that mean you could also enlarge something infinitely?" Wanda asked, a look of true interest on her face.

Scott's eyes went wide for a second then I saw the gears turning in his mind. "In theory, yes. In reality… I so do not want to see that. A man the size of a planet would be a scary sight to behold."

I had the feeling he would be going back to Dr. Pym and having a chat about that possibility.

"Okay, so then how? The power source has to be contained within the shells, else entire power grids would be going down to support the initial explosion." I got the discussion back on track before Wanda went giving Scott any more ideas on how to abuse the tech he had access to. Watching him grow to giant size the first time had been mind-bendingly incredible, but even I could see the potential dangers if the tech got out to the population at large.

"We need to get our hands one," Sam muttered. "Some of these have been planted weeks before they went off."

"How do you know that?" Scott asked, honest curiosity in his voice.

"The container ship," Bucky answered getting to his feet to pace over to the windows. "At sea for weeks, yet the bomb did not go off until it reached the port in India. No one had been on or off since it had left the Port of Angeles."

"Could they be remote triggered?" Sam mused.

Wanda shook her head. "If your data is right it could have had a GPS detonator. Once it reached the proper coordinates…"

"Boom," Sam finished. "Could be. That one is the only outlier in how, the rest could just have had simple timers. But why the distraction explosion in Prague? They didn't need to collapse the tunnel if their real goal had nothing to do with the UN meeting."

That had bothered me as well, but I had just presumed they'd wanted to make a statement beyond the impressive destruction. I glanced over at Bucky who focused on some point beyond the glass in front of him.

"It is the only one that skews the pattern," he agreed voice soft. "I think it was a test. Given we have no idea who is doing this, it is very possible someone monitored the implosion and recorded the effects." He turned about, eyes still not focused on the room about us. "Some sensors in the ground around it would provide an enormous amount of data. From there they could refine their targeting. The pattern and the resulting damage to the plates is obvious… if you are looking for it."

Sam shot a worried look at me.

Bucky saw nothing in the room, even though he seemed to be aware he was not alone. "Buck?"

He turned his head to meet my eyes and it became clear that Bucky was no longer at home. I made certain to stay calm, not wanting to set him off and possibly encourage him to try and kill one or more of us.

"Cap?" Scott asked, but Wanda waved him to silence with a hiss.

"Soldat."

"Da," he responded, looking to me to provide direction.

I had to take a moment to think about it. He'd been talking about the weapons, we all had been, but he had memories that we knew nothing of, so it could be possible he had seen something like them before as The Winter Soldier and his mind, tickled by the information had fallen down the rabbit hole into that particular memory.

"Status on the weapon?"

He blinked, but no sign of Bucky appeared in his eyes. He nodded. "Design is workable, but the power needs still cannot be met. Longest sustained implosion only three point two seconds."

Sam choked on the water he'd been drinking. "He's seen these weapons before?"

"Apparently," Wanda said drily.

"When?" Scott asked.

Bucky looked at him, and Scott just barely held himself still. "Yesterday. November, 17th, 1973."

"Christ, they've had this tech since the seventies?" Sam gasped, eyes snapping wide in surprise.

"And haven't used it," I pointed out.

"Couldn't use it, more like." Scott watched Bucky with care, understanding that this was not the man he'd been dealing with the last few days.

"Mission status?" I requested, but kept the near bark of an order in my tone. He had never been treated as anything but an asset, if I didn't do so now it might cause him to come after me again. I hoped to be able to bring him back without being forced into knocking him out this time. We were both getting tired of it.

"On point. Will observe the final test and then remove all involved. Contact within twelve hours of completion."

"And the data?"

"To remain undamaged. Base and labs intact where possible."

"Shit," Scott muttered. If he turned the data over to Hydra, who created it?"

Bucky tipped his head and answered, "SHIELD. Research base designated Rio Bravo Two. Located in the mountains of New Mexico."

Sam started tapping on the tablet before him, the SHIELD/Hydra files just as accessible to us as the rest of the world. It took him no more than a couple of minutes to pull up the information. "Shut down in November 1973 after an _accident_ killed all the staff. Place was supposedly sealed up and filled with concrete due to and, I quote 'chemical contamination' end quote."

Well, that fit right in with what Buck… The Winter Soldier had just told us.

"How many?" I asked, not really wanting to know, but feeling that I should to be prepared for my friend's reaction when he came out of this.

"At least thirty," Sam answered, tone subdued.

"Well, he's efficient anyway." Scott didn't seem all that fazed by the murderous tendencies of the man standing just across the table from him.

I strode slowly over to the asset, not wanting to startle him. "Thank you for the information," I told him, hoping that this time it would not end in a fight. "I need to talk to Bucky now."

He tipped his head slightly. "Bucky?" he echoed, voice cracking on the name slightly. "He's not… I'm not."

I set a cautious hand on his shoulder. "Come on, Buck, it's just a memory, you can let it go now."

He stiffened, hand coming up as if to knock mine away, but stopped partway up instead, his eyes blinking quickly for several seconds and then suddenly Bucky flooded back into his own mind. He staggered at the sudden return, but I held him steady until he found his balance.

"Is everyone all right?" he asked, head down as if afraid to see what damage he had wrought this time.

I gave his shoulder a squeeze. "We're good and you gave us a direction to go in."

"Really?" he asked head coming up with hope in his eyes.

"Yeah, man. Though it's gonna be a trick to get there." Sam sent the data to the main screen on the wall behind us. The sight of the supposedly defunct SHIELD base on the screen, buried under the mountains in New Mexico. A tiny clearing stood out amongst all the trees, a building, with a dirt road leading to it, visible.

"This is live?" I questioned moving over to the screen.

"Yes." Sam zoomed in and a thoroughly modern Jeep could be seen pulling up, the image so clear you could see the dust kicked up to be carried away by the breeze. "For a closed base, it sure seems active."

"Can you change the view? Any markings on the Jeep?" I asked, watching as the image surged forward, but the angle was horrible and I could see nothing that would clue us into who currently had control of the base.

"If they're online I might be able to get in," Scott offered with a lazy shrug of his shoulders.

I glanced over at Sam, who nodded. "Might be best. Give us an idea of which hornet's nest we'll be hitting with sticks."

"Only if you can do it without being noticed. Don't want them getting antsy." Or to go on alert, or closing up shop and moving elsewhere. This might not be the final stop on this tour.

Scott snorted in derision. "Gimme some credit." He got to his feet. "Send the data to the main system, I'll find a way in."

"On it," Sam confirmed as Scott left the room for the main computer.

"Buck, you okay?" We had a mission to plan, but I needed to know if he was with us, or still lost in his own mind. At least this time he'd come back all on his own, with a little prompting, instead of being forced back into being Bucky.

He sat down heavily in the nearest chair. "Maybe?"

"Do you remember what happened?" Wanda asked, watching him with care. She had been the one to help set the block to prevent the programming from working. She might… might be able to make adjustments to prevent this obvious split from continuing.

He nodded. "It was weird this time. Like I was watching it happen. I spoke, I answered the questions, but I wasn't really there." He sighed heavily running both hands through his hair. "I need to be able to access the memories without… being them. If that makes any sense."

"The memories are not yours in some ways. They belong to the Winter Soldier and you have yet to integrate the two halves fully." She tipped her head slightly to the side. "You still see… feel them as separate entities."

"So, when you need info from the Soldier you become him," I finished, as it had become obvious even to me. If he could control it, it could be of use, but if he fell into the wrong memory at the wrong time it could be very bad. Didn't really want him running off to try and kill Natasha simply because he chose the wrong memory to review.

I looked to Wanda. "This is improvement of sorts, I think."

She nodded. "Better, but he needs to be able to remember without being."

"Yeah," Sam agreed, "you can get a bit cranky when your alter-ego comes out to play."

Bucky snorted, but it lacked any sort of amusement. "I think you might want to plan this one without me. If I've been there before it might just trigger me."

I sighed softly, but nodded in agreement. "You'll monitor from here. We'll go in with those nifty cameras T'Challa sent us so you'll have a live feed and can send us any intel you might have."

"Here's hoping Lang can get into the computer, 'cause I'm betting any blueprints I find will be wrong at this point." Sam tapped a few keys, digging deeper into the info on that particular SHIELD base, a lot of the data heavily redacted, but there was a fair chance he'd dig up the originals before we made our move.

"You'll need to scout on site," Bucky said as he looked over the geosat feed. "Good damn thing we have our own sats, no one will have a clue we're watching." He tapped a few keys and switched the view to infrared. The heat of the day washed it out somewhat, but there were still clear hot and _cold_ spots that had to be underground. "Interesting," he muttered.

In the spirit of delegation I said, "Okay, get all the data you can, I'll check in on Scott and we'll meet back up in six hours and see if we can create a workable plan to get in there."

"And what will you do?" Wanda asked as she scooted over next to Sam.

"Get the gear ready. Buck," he met my eyes, "I need you to see if you can predict when and where for the next bombing."

His eyebrows went up. "Why?"

They weren't going to like this one bit, but if we could pull it off we'd be a step ahead of the bad guys. "I want to get my hands on one of the devices."

Both Wanda and Sam's heads snapped around to look at me. "Are you nuts?"

"Probably," I admitted. "We need to know how to disarm them. To do that we need plans or to get our hands on one. If we can predict when and where…"

Wanda nodded slowly. "We take the chance. Perhaps we should share this information with others that could assist?" The suggestion tentative, but the right one to make and I had considered it from the moment Bucky had figured out what was actually being done.

"Until certain we won't just be giving away the information to the wrong parties I think it would be better to keep this in our hands." I couldn't be sure of anyone any more. Except T'Challa perhaps.

"Send the data to the Wakandans," Bucky suggested with a shrug of his shoulders, echoing my own thoughts on the matter. "Just warn 'em that it's a best guess on our parts as to the purpose. His people are smart and might see something we don't."

I glanced at those about the room and got nods of agreement from the rest of them. "All right. Set up a packet and send it to our contact."

"On it, Cap," Sam said with a serious look on his face.

I looked over all of them and realized I had one hell of a team.


	7. Chapter 7

Spring had come to the mountains of New Mexico, the snow long gone, if it had ever been here at all, and the heat already oppressive at mid-day. We'd done every bit of research we could on this former SHIELD base. Make that not-so-former SHIELD base. Granted, only the one vehicle had been seen coming and going, but it had done so on an exceedingly regular schedule. So perhaps this was no more than a monitoring station of some sort these days?

Bucky had gone back into that memory and and drawn out the base as he remembered it. It conformed, vaguely to the original layout which Sam had managed to find online in some deeply buried, scanned SSR files. True SSR files near as we could tell, and not SSR cum Hydra. Scott had hacked his way in, and while the video feeds were modern and frighteningly clear they were also limited and failed to show anything of value for our needs. The vast majority outside the facility or near any of the five entrances, none from inside the facility itself.

He did admit they could have a security inside, but it clearly could not be accessed from the outside, same for any potential computer systems. That meant any data had to be transported by hand, external drives and the like, into and out of the facility. Physically carried in and out of the building, which could explain that lone person stopping by every single day.

Given the place did not officially exist, he warned us there could be a staff of several hundred in there and he would not know about it. The lack of obvious communication in and out worried him, so he volunteered to come along as he had resources we could never hope to have access to.

So, when the daily employee arrived, Scott went in with him along with his version of an army.

" _I'm in_."

"Watch your back," I reminded, trying not to smile at the sheer joy in his voice. He still found this superhero gig fun even after nearly getting himself killed a few times.

" _I have done this before you know_ ," he complained, but it seemed to be a happy complaint, still not used to working with us as a team.

" _Let him work_ ," Bucky grumbled in my ear, still unhappy about being left behind even though it had been his idea.

The images Scott and his team compiled would be sent to the base, where Bucky would sort them out and then send the data to us. Currently we lay beneath the brush a fair distance from the entrance, in line of sight, but barely. We'd had to hike a fair half mile from the quinjet and would be limited on information until we got back to it.

We lay there in silence for nearly ten minutes before I began to worry. "Lang?" I queried, hoping like hell he hadn't gotten caught.

" _He's offline_ ," Bucky informed us. " _All signals cut off about five minutes in._ "

"Shit," I muttered. I turned to Sam and Wanda who had been leaning against trees looking bored the entire time, but I knew better, they'd been watching everything I hadn't been able to, making certain we remained clear.

There came a high-pitched squeal and a crackle of static in my earpiece followed by a distorted, " _Captain_?"

"Lang?"

" _Sorry, Cap, they have jammers in place and it took me a few to route around them. Cameras should now be online_."

" _Got them_ ," Bucky confirmed. " _Fuck, what the hell are they doing in there_?"

Well that didn't sound good at all. "Buck?"

" _Gimme a couple, I need to sort out the images. Cool idea, by the way, using the ants to transport the cameras_."

I had to agree with that. Let us get all the intel we needed with minimal staff and low human casualty risk.

" _Cap, I think we have a serious problem here_." Scott's voice actually trembled on the the words.

I sighed heavily. "Scott? What do you see?"

" _Cryo chambers_ ," he answered in a hushed tone.

I had no idea if he were full sized at the moment, but either way he clearly feared being discovered. I heard Bucky growl over the comms, while both Wanda and Sam stiffened.

That would explain the odd cold spots on the IR feed. "Anyone in them?"

" _How mad will Barnes get if I say yes_?"

An eerie silence was all that came down the comms from Bucky, probably trying to absorb that info without losing his calm.

"Fucking Hydra," Sam muttered under his breath.

" _I don't think so_ ," Scott stated. " _I'm going to try and get into the computer system. I've rigged a data relay that can hopefully handle the data stream. I'll need ten minutes_."

"What about the weapons?" Wanda asked.

" _I'll know more once I'm in the system. More cameras should be online shortly._ "

Meaning the ants were still making there way in and finding new things to send our way. I lowered the glasses, no longer interested in watching the lone jeep and debating whether or not we should have a chat with the gentleman when he came out.

"How many people inside?" I asked, hoping Bucky had cooled down enough to answer.

" _A few dozen. All geeks of one stripe or another. May have military training, but it's not obvious. Have not seen anything resembling an armory, or the weapons, but they may not be deep enough yet._ " His tone icily calm and controlled.

We'd known that someone had taken the remains of the Winter Soldier base, but to have the cryochambers up and running with possible soldiers in them already? It seemed far too soon. The tech had been heavily damaged in the fight with Tony, I doubted anyone, save Tony, could have it back online so quickly.

"Buck, are they from the Siberia base?"

Sam twitched at that. I'd told him what we'd found and what had happened and he'd been there when we'd gone back to find the place cleaned out. "Christ, Cap, this is bad."

It took a couple seemingly endless minutes, but Bucky finally said, " _No. These are different_."

Ah, fucking hell. That left few options. It could be another Hydra base where they'd been working on their own super-soldier project, which was, in my mind, the best case scenario, or… Or someone else had been playing with the tech for their own reasons. The US government had done it before - with me being living proof of it - no reason they couldn't try again especially with the big reveal of the Winter Soldier project and its, admittedly limited, success.

" _Okay, upload to our servers is commencing. Encrypted in case they discover it, and bouncing through various relays to hide our sats. I'm getting out of here. This place is scary._ "

"Good work, meet at the rendezvous point."

" _Aye aye, captain_."

I could tell he'd been waiting to say that one for a while and I failed utterly to hide the smile. The amusement as short lived as it would be needed to keep me from wanting to scream in frustration. "Buck?"

" _No data yet, but if he's bouncing it it might… ah there it is. Gonna take a while, the packet is huge._ "

"So this place is a bust?" Sam asked, arms crossed over his chest.

"For the weapons, maybe," Wanda commented looking unhappy. "Why would…" She shook her head. "No, I understand why they would do this, but I don't understand _why they would do this_." Her eyes filled with anger and confusion and while I wanted to spout off any of a dozen potential justifications for what might very well be the US government trying to create an army of super soldiers, I just couldn't. Couldn't believe they would, after this whole mess with the Accords, do what they seemed to claim they feared the most and turn others into living weapons.

I sighed heavily. "We only know there are cryo chambers with people in them. We know nothing else. They could be Inhumans, or injured soldiers they froze in an effort to save them."

Sam barked in harsh laughter. "Tell me you don't really believe that fantasy?"

I shook my head. No, I didn't but I apparently had enough faith left in me to give those within the benefit of the doubt. "Sam, this is not our target today."

His jaw clenched, but he nodded. "Whatever you say, Cap."

Scott suddenly appeared beside Sam, making him jump half a mile.

The mask flipped up, "Sorry, I keep forgetting you can't see me." The smile halfhearted at best. He hadn't liked what he'd found in there. "My team will hang around for a few hours and then get out. That should get you a decent scan of the base."

"Good work," I told him. "Opinions?"

Scott leaned back against a tree. "A reenactment of the Winter Soldier's original mission," he suggested at least partially serious.

Bucky snorted loud enough for everyone to hear across the intervening distance.

Scott shrugged. "We figure out what they are really doing and then make a decision. I'm a thief not a spy, but that place creeped me the hell out. Whatever they are doing in there... it is _not_ good."

I did not know Scott very well, but for a all that he was a thief, he was a good man and my gut had said I could trust him from the get go. I had no reason to doubt his judgement since he had been the only one of us actually there.

"We'll go through the data and then make a decision." I looked to the others and they nodded in agreement. "All right let's fully scout the exterior while we wait for Scott's team to finish then we'll head back home."

Scott tipped his head, mask slipping down. "Too late, alarms are going off inside."

" _I don't think it was you_ ," Bucky stated, I could hear the distraction in his voice. " _The nerds don't seem overly concerned… Oh, wait. They found the upload and… yep, the whole place has gone dark. I'm cutting transmission at my end, that should keep them from tracking the signal back to us. I still have access to the exterior security, but that's it. I'll give you a head's up if anyone's coming out, but I'd hold your position for now._ "

I agreed with that assessment. No need to advertise we were here in person as well as electronically. "Scott, recall your team."

He nodded. "On their way out. Soon as they're clear I'll release them. Cameras will fall off in a few days, no harm no foul."

"Have to say I am impressed Tic-Tac," Sam told him with a wry grin. "You ever need backup…"

"I have you on speed dial." He turned his gaze over the area. "Any chance one of those bombs might end up in my backyard?"

He had family there, a life there, maybe even a love there; one beyond that for his daughter, he had every right to be concerned and, more, to ask us.

"We don't know," Wanda answered. "So far all the blasts have been near minor or previously unknown faults."

"Or created those faults," I reminded, since we really didn't have a clue.

She inclined her head to acknowledge my correction. "If the goal were simple damage there are much larger faults, such as the San Andreas near Los Angeles, that would make a better target."

Scott nodded in agreement, but asked, "So what is the goal?"

"I wish we knew," I muttered softly. "So far the damage seems subtle, but cumulative. Little pushes to cause some larger damage in the future."

"So all of this is just the warm up?"

I nodded.

"What the hell is the finale gonna be?"

Good damn question.

 

~^~^~^~^~

 

Bucky was punching things again.

We'd converted half the garage into a training room, much as we had planned to. Mats and weights and heavy bags and obstacles and all kinds of stuff for those with enhanced abilities to play with. The first time I saw Scott free climb the wall we'd put in I stood there gaping open mouthed. For a normal human he impressed the hell out of me. I mean, to do what he did for a living, a legitimate cat burglar, you had to be able to climb. I guess I just hadn't realized what that would mean in the real world.

We went through a lot of heavy bags, both Bucky and I pounding the shit out of and ultimately breaking them on average of once a week. Yes, all four (five if Scott was in residence) sparred regularly, but Bucky and I had to hold back with everyone but each other. One full power hit at the wrong moment could kill the normals we worked with. I pushed them as hard as I could, encouraged them to use all of their abilities, especially when going against me.

So we used up our energy and strength on inanimate objects that could not protest our abuse of them. Better the bags than people, in my mind.

Sparring with the others remained challenging given Sam had his wings, Wanda her magic, and Scott his suit. He turned out to be strong as hell when tiny and had put me down with one punch I had failed to be prepared for. He shifted size with a skill and speed that inspired me, his mind elastic and thinking a dozen steps ahead with an ease that impressed all of us.

He might behave like a six year old on Christmas morning most of the time, but a genius lived behind those blue eyes that could easily be used to do very bad things if he hadn't been an inherently good man at heart.

Scott had very much accepted who he was, faults and all.

Bucky… not so much.

So when he couldn't, or wouldn't, I could never be certain, sleep he could either be found sitting next to the waterfall or hitting the heavy bag; a mix of basic boxing techniques and Sam's MMA style kicks and hits. Knees, elbows, you name it it got used to set the canvas covered bag to swinging violently. His timing exquisite as a kick would send the bag swinging high to the left to be met by a fist coming from that very direction. He tried not to punch with his left arm, his control excellent, but in a battle between canvas covered sand versus vibranium enhanced metal the canvas lost every single time.

He wore a padded glove on his right, again more to protect the equipment than his hand, and basic shorts paired with a sleeveless compression shirt that hid nothing, every muscle prominent through the dark red material. His hair hung loose and sweaty, which meant he'd been at this for a while.

Blood ran down his right shin, surely making the mat slick under his bare feet, but it didn't slow him down one whit. Twisting and spinning to some pattern in his mind that had probably been beat into him while in the… employ of Hydra.

He executed a viscous spin kick that sent the bag swinging hard enough to _thunk_ solidly into the girder it hung from. Thankfully it didn't explode - cleaning sand out of the jeeps hadn't been fun the last two times so we'd taken to covering them with tarps just in case - but it came back down dribbling sand onto the floor, like a balloon with a slow leak, the bag hollowing out slowly as it swung to a stop.

Bucky stood there panting, glaring at it as if angry it had failed to stand up to the beating he had given it.

"Fuck," he muttered, shoving his hair out of his face then going eerily still as he realized he was no longer alone in the room.

"What happened?" I asked waving at the blood staining the floor.

He shrugged, stalking over to the table where a water bottle stood. He took a long drink before answering. "Slipped." He jabbed a hand at the climbing wall.

"Trying to escape?" I watched as he grabbed a towel, wet it at the nearby sink, and began cleaning the blood off his leg. I had to wonder why he hadn't taken the the few minutes to let it heal before continuing his workout. It looked to have a been a fairly nasty scrape originally, but now only oozed blood because he had simply ignored it and kept going. Injuries like that usually healed in minutes for us.

"Always," he told me without looking up, "but I know I never can."

I sighed softly. "Bucky, you gotta forgive yourself sometime." He would torture himself with his evil deeds far more than anyone else ever could. He still talked about turning himself in, to protect us to a degree I imagined, but more to try to absolve himself from his perceived sins.

It wouldn't work. What he'd done would haunt him no matter what punishment levied against him. In his heart he knew he could never truly make reparations for what he had done. Even his death would not redeem him. Oh, some might see it as justice, but he had only one life to give for the many he had taken and in his mind, heart and soul it would _never_ be enough.

"Kinda hard to do when new memories keep popping up to remind what a monster I really am."

He tossed the bloody rag into the sink, hands going to his head, buried in the long straggly hair and digging into his scalp. It had to hurt, but he didn't seem to notice or care. The pain deserved in his opinion.

"Bucky, you are no more a monster than I am," I said this with every bit of conviction I could muster. James Barnes was most certain not a monster. The Winter Soldier however… And that touch of uncertainty must have been in my voice as he met my eyes with pain buried in his.

"I wish we could just take it away. Take _him_ away and leave the man you think I am behind."

The anguish in his voice damn near broke me. He hated himself, hated what Hydra had made him into, and hated the person he currently had to be. Torn down the middle with the confused and jumbled memories pulling him in multiple directions at once. And me here, not helping, looking for a person who might never exist in any form again.

I wanted my friend, but the man, the brave, tortured man before me could never be him.

And I had been so deep in denial that I had probably fucked up his recovery worse than just letting him find some sort of balance on his own.

Wanting him to be a certain way that he could feel, could remember, but could not _be._

"Is that what you really want?"

"I… Maybe? Would be simpler. Take away the soldier and leave only Bucky behind like you want."

Christ, I had been such a fucking idiot.

"This isn't about me," I told him, feeling like I should spend the next hour apologizing to him for not understanding, for not truly looking beyond the image I had of him in my head.

Of being just like Tony and making this all about me instead of helping my friend to get his life together the way he needed.

Yes, I wanted my James Bucky Barnes back.

No, I couldn't have him.

Yet the man before me needed me to be his friend, to be his reminder of who he had been, to help make certain he had a safe place to be, and maybe want to stay instead of escape. "Why do you never wear shoes when here?"

He twitched, shooting an odd look at me that I couldn't quite place. "Because I know it's real. The hard ground beneath my feet, the cold concrete, the imperfect surface. It doesn't change, no matter matter what it will stay the same."

Talk about staying grounded, he'd taken that word quite literally. Shit, the four of us were a mess. Every single one of us feeling guilt over the the past, what we'd lost and what we could never have again. For an instant I was amazed we could even function individually or as a team.

I settled onto the nearest horizontal surface, a wobbly stool that lived near one of the work benches. "What do you want to do?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, leaning back against the sink and watching me with hooded eyes.

I rubbed my face in my hands. "Maybe I should ask who do you want to be?" Hell, I'd resisted asking myself that over the last few months as I tried to just keep going, being the best person I knew how, and fucking it up beyond measure time and time again.

He shook his head. "That's not something you choose, it's something you are. And right now I'm two very different people."

I nodded slowly, understanding as much as I could anyway. Wanda had described it as similar to split personality disorder, a manufactured version. There remained a crack in his psyche, a wall dividing the Soldier from the man and she had no idea if it could be breached. As if he could only be one or the other and not both, never become some amalgam version of the two. If that happened there would be no guarantee that the man would end up being the one in charge, the memories of both, but the personality of only one.

Could he still be Bucky if the Soldier ran the ship?

Would he still be Bucky if he retained the memories of the Soldier?

No, not really.

And I _had_ to accept that.

Time to get to know the man before me.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've read more than few fics where the Avengers have a "movie night" and I really like that idea. Gives us some insight to the characters without the pressure of life and death situations. So, yeah, I kinda borrowed the idea. Many thanks to all those who have used it before me.

 

"Fuck," Bucky snarled, snapping the controls of the quinjet hard to the right and punching it.

I ended up on my ass, slammed into the back of the quinjet, my ears ringing since I hadn't yet put on my helmet and the walls of the ship were not designed for friendly impacts.

"Cap," Sam shouted, the concern evident in his tone even if the words were oddly distorted to my ears.

"Shit. Shit. Shit." Bucky chanted from up front, the engines whining to a pitch that I knew was not normal. "Wanda," he bellowed, words twisted and echoing strangely.

"I'll try," she replied, that red energy she generated spreading out from her hands only to be dragged away from wherever she had intended it to go.

Then I realized what had happened.

The bomb had gone off and we had been caught in the inexorable pull of the singularity.

I hadn't earned a concussion when my head had hit the wall. Their voices were distorted because we were close enough to the event horizon for it to affect time and space around us.

We were fucked, as Tony had oft been wont to say.

And he would so make fun of that sentence if I had said it aloud with him in the room.

The smart-assed little shit.

God, I missed him.

And then everything snapped back to normal so quickly my ears popped and it felt like I had a hangover of epic proportions.

The quinjet jerked and damn near flipped over, but Bucky got control back quickly.

"Steve?"

"I'm good," I assured them, getting slowly to my feet.

"You're bleeding," Sam told me, gesturing at my face.

My hand went to my lips, blood running down from my nose. I didn't remember hitting my face, but given the headache, could be possible. "Everyone all right?"

I got affirmation from all of them. We'd survived, but failed utterly at what we'd intended. "Set us down. This is now a search and rescue mission."

"Damn it," Bucky muttered. "I screwed up."

"No, man," Sam argued. "You were dead on."

"But we're too late," Bucky argued, even as he leveled off, his landing place chosen.

"This time, yeah, but you just figured it out a couple hours ago. It works, we just need more lead time to get on site," Sam argued and I agreed with him wholeheartedly. "That bomb could have been planted an hour ago for all we know."

Wanda nodded in total agreement. "Recriminations later." She pointed at a nearby building that had been damaged by the bomb. "We have work to do first."

The quinjet settled onto the ground, the rear door opening. I stepped out into the dust and rubble the implosion had left behind. Car alarms and sirens and screams could be heard from all around us. Two buildings had been damaged, one majorly, shedding glass and metal and pieces of people's lives onto the broken earth left behind. "Sam, scout and triage, coordinate with Wanda to get all those you can out of the buildings. Start from the top floors. They are not going to remain standing for much longer."

Sam was out the door with his wings snapping open an instant after I finished speaking. Wanda following after, her method of flight only marginally less effective than Sam's.

Buck came up behind me, handing me my helmet and new shield. "Start from the bottom?"

I shook my head. "We find survivors." I pointed at the hole in the ground. The bomb had gone off at one end of a park framed by a half dozen tall buildings, the beautiful spring afternoon interrupted by hell on earth for roughly ninety seconds. Hundreds of people, families, _children_ had come out to enjoy the day without a care in the world.

I could see the remains of a playground, the elaborate structure for children to climb in and through and around twisted into fantastical shapes, uprooted trees, stabbed through the heart of it, strollers and blankets and toys strewn about as if some careless hand had simply swept them aside. Not caring where they might land or who would follow behind to clean up the mess.

This _mess_ , sadly, included tears and blood.

Buck shook his head, "No, we start there."

I didn't argue.

 

 

~^~^~^~^~

 

" _Cap, we've got incoming,"_ Sam warned from his position high above the rubble.

It felt like we had been here for days, but couldn't have been more than an hour at most. He and Wanda still rescued survivors from the upper floors of the buildings surrounding us, while Bucky and I worked the ground level. Digging through the rubble in hopes of finding anyone still alive.

That hope had been faint from the beginning and only grown smaller in the intervening time.

I looked up at the sky to see Iron Man, Vision, and two quinjets circling in for a landing. Then War Machine appeared, and for a moment my heart leapt in joy at the thought Rhodey had returned to work.

But deep in my heart I knew it could not be Rhodey in that suit.

The two quinjets landed near ours, men boiling out in armour, but lacking weapons. Instead every single man carried what looked like first aid and rescue gear. Orders were barked and they quickly split into four teams, moving to aid the various first responders that had arrived within minutes of the explosion.

A triage area had been set up in the undamaged portion of the park, medical personnel of all stripes having been called in to handle the wounded. Sadly, so far, on the ground anyway, the dead outnumbered them by three to one.

" _Cap, do we bail?"_

Bucky growled, " _No. If they want to arrest us in the middle of a rescue op, let them. I'm sure that'll do wonders for their smear campaign against us._ " He tossed aside a huge piece of concrete, which was followed by a cry that could easily be heard over the comms. " _I got a live one._ "

Iron Man got there before I could move more than three steps.

I don't know what I expected, but for Tony to ask Bucky, " _What's our play_?" had to be about the last thing on that list.

The poor kid looked terrified, dead pale, arm trapped at the elbow under part of an I-beam, burnt and bruised and scraped all to hell, but alive and fighting to stay that way. The slab of wall Bucky had removed must have tented over him, protecting him from other falling debris, but leaving him trapped and alone.

Bucky ignored Tony and ripped off his headgear, so the child could see his face and began to speak in a soothing tone, the language strikingly musical and completely unknown to me.

The child swallowed his cries, hiccuped and nodded, body relaxing marginally as Bucky's words calmed him. His one arm trapped just below the elbow under what might have been a park bench at one time, the colorful metal twisted and tangled with the other detritus that had been dragged towards the center of destruction.

"We'll need to put a tourniquet in place before we free his arm, " I stated, not certain if I should actually acknowledge the presence of the man before us. It seemed safer to pretend that we were nothing more than good samaritans stepping in to render aid than to force him to admit who we were and feel obligated to act upon it.

"On it." Bucky dug through the various pockets on the jacket he wore to come up with what looked like an old school bungee cord. He spoke to the child, showing him the item and explaining what he intended to do. Or so I guessed based on the way the child's eyes followed his every move.

"Once I have this on give it a five count and then you lift, while I get him out." Bucky looked up to the glowing eyes of Iron Man who nodded.

"Done."

Buck quickly got the oversized elastic in place, not bothering with the hooks and simply tying it firmly in place. He got his arms under the child, intending to lift him the instant he had been freed.

"And up," Tony announced, heaving the twisted and jammed metal up slow but steady until the boy's arm slid free all on it's own. The lower arm still attached, if barely. Poor kid would probably lose it. Bucky shifted the boy, who had done nothing more than whimper as he had been lifted, Bucky doing his best to hide the damage from the child.

I moved over to them and did what I could to splint the arm in hopes it could be saved and to ensure the boy would not have too see how badly he had been hurt any sooner than necessary. As soon as I completed my task, Bucky took off, long smooth strides that barely jostled the child as he ran across the rubble and to the nearest triage tent.

"Captain," Stark began, but I shook my head to silence him.

"Not any more," I told him, meaning it. I would never be Captain America again.

I heard the sigh through the speaker. "Fair enough. Steve, where can we help?"

I blinked. "Uh, I presumed you would take over."

He shook his head. "Not a chance. You have point. Tell me where you want us."

"You aren't here to arrest us?" I felt like an idiot the instant the words were out of my mouth.

He laughed, the mask flipping up so I could see his face. The humor clearly forced, his eyes a heavy presence upon mine. The suit a new design, which I guess made sense given we'd basically destroyed the one he'd worn last. He looked sleeker and had added black accents to the red and gold."You got here first, how?"

I debated for an instant then removed my mask as well, sensing he needed to see _me,_ hear _me,_ and not the modulated tone from the mask. "Luck?" I tried but he didn't buy it for a second. "We found a pattern, ran a program we'd cobbled together and it pointed here. We just didn't get here fast enough."

His face looked thunderous for an instant then went coldly neutral. "You didn't think to share this… information with anyone?"

I stiffened. We had shared, with the Wakandans, but they were still analyzing the data last we'd checked. "With who? Who do I trust? You? The JCTC? SHIELD? The ATC? Any or all of them could be involved with it, whether they know it or not."

His entire face tightened, though with anger or some other emotion I could not place a name to I could not be certain. Hurt remained at the end, though why I should be surprised by that emotion, I had no idea. It seemed odd to me, that anything I could say would hurt him enough for him to show it.

"You're right, of course. Shall I lead, or would you like to this time."

And with that he shut himself down, the moment lost as he went back into his shell, literally, as the mask closed with that metallic _clang_. Fuck.

"Have Vision and War Machine aid Sam and Wanda getting survivors out of the buildings. Have two of your teams search the lower levels and check the stability of them. We need them cleared out or get supports in place before they collapse."

"Done," he agreed. "And me?" the tone stiff and unyielding.

"Map the rubble in the blast zone, look for signs of life and tag 'em when you find 'em." I slipped my mask back into place. "The IR has limited range in these." I tapped the lenses. "And the heat of the day is beginning to wash it out."

"Works. We'll coordinate for rescues, yes? Comm line three?" he suggested and I nodded.

Then he launched into the air.

I turned to see Bucky heading back my way and picked up his headgear from where he'd tossed it aside. "How's the kid?" I asked as I handed it to him.

He shrugged. "Might lose the arm. Too soon to tell. Be nice if we could find his mother."

Shit. "She was here?"

He nodded. "Said she got pulled away from him."

Double shit. "The chances we'll find her, much less alive…" I trailed off, no need to state what we both knew.

"Still gotta try."

So we did.

 

~^~^~^~^~

 

Wanda made it back to the base before everything we'd dealt with the last two days hit her. She took two steps out of the quinjet, turned a full circle eyes oddly blank and then burst into tears, exhaustion and stress conspiring against her until the clearly much needed cathartic release escaped from her.

Not a single one of us blamed her. Hell, I kind of wanted to join her. A good cry seemed to be the thing needed most right now.

I went to her, dropping my gear carelessly to the floor, and wrapped my arms about her. I'd removed the upper half of the uniform during the flight in an attempt to get more comfortable, and her tears quickly dampened the shirt I had worn beneath.

I didn't care.

Sam patted me on the shoulder as he walked by, staggered, really. We had been worn down by this one. To come so close to preventing the explosion and to fail… it sucked. And then to have the Avengers, the official Avengers show up and then work with us like we'd been doing it for years, like the rift between us had never happened… well, it weighed heavily on me.

I squeezed Wanda tighter, holding on, as much as she needed to be held.

Eventually, I simply scooped her up in my arms and carried her to her room. The tears having subsided somewhat, though I suspected another round would be in the offing once she had recovered some energy.

"I'm sorry," she muttered once I'd set her down.

"Don't be."

"You must hate when I act like a girl," she groused, unable to meet my eyes. She shed her jacket, tossing it onto a chair and hunting down a box of tissues.

"Well, first of all you are a girl," that earned a hint of a smile, "and second be glad you can still feel the emotions, a lot of us lose that after a while, just become numb to the pain of others. You care. That will never be a bad thing."

She sighed and snuffled, tissue coming up to dab at her eyes. "You still care. Too much sometimes, but you just lock it away and suffer alone."

I did my best to not react, not liking the fact that she could read me so easily. Then again she had been in my mind and had some idea of how I held onto myself. "Better I suffer than others."

She gave a harsh bark of laughter. "And you wonder why we all do the same." She shook her head. "We live together, we're friends, I hope, and we're a team. We need to support each other. And we've been failing at that."

I didn't disagree with her, but sharing the personal had never been something I had been good at, except with Bucky. Sam now and then these days, but I had most of a century on Wanda and, let's be real here, I had no idea how to talk to women in general or this one in particular.

But she didn't need a father figure or big brother - she had Clint for that - she needed a friend and I figured I could probably manage that without screwing it up too badly.

"Team building?"

"Bonding," she corrected. "Something we do together that isn't about training, or life and death situations or saving the world from itself."

I kind of liked that idea. Tony would throw parties just for the hell of it, forcing me to interact with the others without the threat of imminent death and I hadn't hated it, least not when it had been people I had become familiar and comfortable with.

"A book club?" I suggested, earning a real snort of amusement from her.

"Netflix night," she countered with. "Once a month at least. Movies, or binge watch a TV show with lots of popcorn and junk food."

"We could rearrange the dining hall, bring in some comfy chairs. I'm certain we can install a projector ourselves." We didn't use the room for anything else right now. Looked like I'd be trolling Amazon again for goodies, which I didn't mind at all.

"Perfect," she agreed, then yawned hard enough for me to hear her jaw pop.

"You need to sleep."

She nodded in agreement. "Thank you, Steve."

"No need."

I left her alone to clean up and get some rest, wishing that I could do the same with such ease.

I headed for the garage, suspecting I would find Bucky there punching things and found Sam instead.

"Wanda good?" He had his wings up in the rig, one wing drooping noticeably, tools in his hands as he made adjustments.

"Good enough. Will be better after twelve hours of sleep and some food." I rubbed my face in my hands, feeling the need to visit the Land of Nod myself. Sam and Wanda had catnapped a few times when they'd started making careless mistakes, including the hiccup that had damaged his wing. Wanda had pulled his ass out of the fire on that one, catching him in the air as he had tumbled, too close to the ground to use the emergency chute, but too high to survive the fall.

"You should get some sleep too," Sam told me in his boss voice, which, while cute, still irritated me.

"Want to check in with all of you first." I settled against the tool bench, my stomach growling it's need for sustenance in the near future.

"I'm fine," he assured me. "Go grab some food and then crash. We ain't going anywhere for a few hours anyway." He walked to the bench and picked up the tablet like device that would run a diagnostic on the jet pack and make certain it functioned within normal parameters. Having it crap out mid-flight, or worse, explode would be embarrassing and probably deadly to Sam, so we learned to maintain the gear. We no longer had our mechanic to fix our toys, or build us new ones, when we broke them.

"Should I have given Tony the data?" I asked softly. I'd been second guessing my decision for the last two days, if only in the back of my head. I'd really questioned it on the flight home. The implosion and rescue efforts splashed all over the news, with, to my surprise actually, no snarky commentary on why me and my little band hadn't been arrested once the majority of the dust had settled.

Sam sighed heavily as he made the last few connections and started the program. "Man, I can't answer that. Could he maybe have figured it out sooner? Yeah, of course."

I twitched, but latched onto that _maybe_ like a lifeline.

"I guess it would depend if it were _Tony Stark_ getting the data versus _Iron Man._ They have different obligations where it comes to the Accords." He set the tablet down on a stool dragged over for that purpose and moved to settle next to me. "We don't know who to trust, so we trust no one. It limits what we can do." He shrugged. "It's not right or wrong in this case."

"But if I had he… we might have stopped this one." I knew what ifs and recriminations would change nothing in the past, could not bring back a single person who had been killed, and there had been a lot of them. Over two hundred dead this time. A third of them children. Children who might have lived if I had simply trusted someone, anyone with what we knew.

"You sent the data to Wakanda, right?" I nodded. "They ain't dummies, they would have gotten back to you if they had something concrete, but they didn't. Hell, we still have no clue how the damn things are powered."

I threaded my fingers together behind my head. "We got readings this time, I just haven't had a chance to look at 'em, yet. But if it confirms Hydra tech…" I felt the need to punch something, a fairly solid wall by preference, release some of the frustration I felt.

"Well, who do you trust that knows Hydra tech?" Sam suggested. "Fury still has his contacts, maybe he's heard something."

I lowered my hands. "Why Fury?"

"Well, didn't you tell me they were working on those Hydra-clone weapons?"

"Yeah, but the tesseract is off-world."

He shrugged. "If it was off-world why did Loki's Sceptre still work?"

I went very still at that. "I thought it was because of the mind gem." But it was the combination of the two, the tesseract energy and the mind gem that allowed the mind control effect to work, so why indeed had the Sceptre kept working? "I think I need to make some calls."

"Yeah, we do. But not now." He set a hand on my shoulder. "Cap, to be blunt, you look like shit. Go have your chat with Bucky then sleep. That's an order, soldier."

I snorted. "Yes, sir." I even gave him a salute. "Thanks, Sam."


	9. Chapter 9

When my phone rang, not _the phone_ , but the regular one, I answered it with only a hint of trepidation. "Rogers."

" _Why me_?" The voice of Maria Hill complained in my ear. " _Why send those files to me_?"

My answer surprisingly simple. "I trust you, Hill."

And I did. I had considered contacting Fury or Natasha, but both of them were so far off the grid right now, it could have taken weeks and we needed help now.

" _Tony is seriously pissed at you right now. You realize he did not have permission to assist you on that last rescue."_

That I had not known, given he'd shown up with those tactical teams. Ross must have blown a gasket when he'd found out and then probably claimed all the credit to save face. Tony had literally held out an olive branch and I'd shoved it right back down his throat.

Well, if that failed to win the top prize of asshole of the year I didn't know what would.

I hit the speaker and set the phone down on the desk. "What do you want me to say?"

" _You're an idiot, Rogers."_

"This is not news," I pointed out.

She snorted. " _How can I help?"_

"You tell me, how can you help? We can see there's a pattern, but our timing is off and we don't know why. And none of it will matter if we can't figure out how to turn the damn things off. We think we have the shell they're using, but no clue what mods they are making. Have you been playing with the Phase II weapons?" Might as well get that one out in the open.

" _Not us. The Avengers anyway. I can't speak for anyone else."_

"Can you find out?"

" _I will look into it."_ I could hear her tapping keys over the line. " _These readings are scarily similar to the tesseract energy."_

"Which is why we're concerned. I was under the impression Thor had secured the tesseract well away from Earth."

" _So was I. It's not like I can just call him up and ask, but I will speak to Drs. Selvig and Foster and see if they have heard anything."_

This just kept getting messier by the moment. "Maria, this is bigger than the Avengers or me and my team, if we can't stop these implosions…" I trailed off, not wanting to completely admit to being in over my head even though I knew I was, that we were. That there could be the distinct possibility that if we failed the human race might not survive.

" _This analysis is… worrying,_ " she agreed, her tone perfectly calm and controlled which let me know she didn't think we were nuts or crying wolf to get back into the world's good graces.

"We're working on the prediction table, but it's not exactly our forte."

" _Understood. Full disclosure on this, Steve. You'll need to trust my judgement on who I tell at this end. I presume the database you've given me access to is secure and can't be traced back to your location?"_

"You mean you haven't tried already?" I forced myself to say this lightly, as it had been a concern. I'd been assured by Scott that they could not track it back to the base, but it had still been a risk. Hell, it had taken me twenty-four hours to check the quinjet and our gear for trackers. Any member of Tony's team could have planted them at any time. The quinjet had been visible to all and we hadn't even thought about protecting ourselves at the time.

She laughed " _Of course I have. Whoever you have designing your encryption and firewalls is damn good."_

I'd would have to thank Scott personally next time he stopped by. Maybe send a gift to his daughter.

"Maria…"

" _Give me two days. This number good for contacting you?"_

"Yes. Thank you." Those words not nearly enough to describe how I appreciated her going out of her way to assist on this. "Let us know if you need anything."

" _I will."_

And with that she closed the connection at her end, probably already working on the problem, but that didn't mean we should slow down. No, we would review the data and see if we could stop the next one, even without knowing how the damn things were even powered.

 

~^~^~^~^~

 

Wanda hip checked Sam, knocking him off balance enough to end up on his ass. He rolled and got back to his feet smoothly, twisted and aimed a punch at my mid-section. I jumped back, ending up looking like a ballerina on my toes, arms stretched out in an effort to keep my balance.

Sam grinned, grabbed a wrist and yanked. Already off balance, I went forward face first, just barely managing to fold into a roll and come back up on my feet.

I wiped sweat off my forehead, panting.

It had been raining for days, we'd made only limited headway on finding the next target, even coordinating with Maria, and begun snapping at each other due to being so wired with no actual release of the tensions. So I had decreed a training day. Hand to hand only, no weapons, no enhancements and paired off. So, Wanda and I worked together to defeat Sam and Bucky. Bucky would need to take care with his left arm, but other than that we'd been evenly matched.

Wanda needed the most work in close quarter combat, but she learned quickly and turned out to be shockingly agile. Eeling out of holds with an ease that impressed me. She needed to build up some strength if she ever wanted to be able to get a full grown man into hold and keep him in it, but she would get there. Made me wish Nat would visit, she'd be able to show Wanda some moves even I couldn't yet manage.

Previously she had fought learning hand to hand, citing her abilities being more than enough to keep others from closing with her, but then Vision had managed to disable her at the airport and that had left her vulnerable to attack. So she had agreed, if grudgingly at first.

"Did I hurt you?" Sam teased, causing Bucky to snicker and shake his head. "Maybe you should sit this out and let the little girl handle it."

"Less talk, more fighting," Wanda sneered. "Unless you're chicken?"

Bucky didn't give her a second to settle and launched himself at her. Two swift steps and he closed with her, she blocked his punch, but held onto the arm, hands at wrist and elbow, pressing in just the right spots to hit the main nerves. Bucky yelped and went up on the balls of his feet in an effort to find relief from the sudden excruciating pain shooting up his forearm.

Keeping a hold on his arm, she spun, hooking her foot behind his knee and yanking forward.

He fell backwards onto the mat with a solid thwack that I could feel through the floor.

She managed to keep a hold of him, but lost some of the grip that induced the pain. He rolled, grasped her calf in his left hand and simply yanked her off her feet.

She came down hard, her elbow impacting his upper chest hard enough to make him gasp, face screwing up in pain. Wanda lay there panting, looking as if stars spun about her head, the wind clearly knocked out of her.

Bucky flipped up onto his feet with a grunt, and stalked away.

"Wanda, you okay?" I asked.

She waved a hand about to signal her still being alive, but stayed on the floor, taking a moment to recover.

"Look out," Sam shouted and I turned in time to see Bucky go after Wanda, knife in hand.

She didn't hesitate, red light shooting out from her hands and blasting Bucky away from her. He smashed into the workbench, fell to the floor, rolled, getting right back to his feet. He instantly charged her again.

Wanda tried to get to her feet, but I could see wouldn't be in time. "Bucky," I barked, hoping to get his attention, "stand down."

He didn't even acknowledge my presence.

Sam surged forward, placing his body between the two of them, only to be shoved aside with a careless twist of Bucky's left arm.

Wanda had made it to one knee, that red glow about her hands, eyes wide in shock. Bucky leapt forward, knife hand up preparing to sweep down with devastating power only to be deflected aside by the glowing shield she managed to get into place barely in time. Again she shoved him away, but it lacked the power of the first one.

He snarled and twisted about, throwing the knife at her as a distraction.

She caught it with her power and flung it right back at him as she got to her feet, a look of concentration on her face. The knife flew true, but Buck moved faster catching it in his left hand with startling ease.

All of this happened in a matter of seconds.

I managed to get my act together and got between him and Wanda.

I instantly knew that Bucky had been replaced with the cold, calculating persona of The Winter Soldier. "Stop," I ordered.

He ignored me, a dangerous smile appearing on his face. "Make me," he challenged.

Well, shit.

I had no clue which incarnation of the Soldier stood before me, and it didn't matter. I would not let him harm Wanda or Sam. "Bucky, come on."

For an instant recognition flashed in his eyes, then it, and my friend, were gone. He twisted slightly and threw the knife at Wanda, who for all she had the energy literally at hand, seemed completely unprepared for the attack.

I, being the idiot only I could be, jumped into the path of the flying weapon.

It impacted my upper chest on the left side, buried to the hilt. I staggered, but stayed on my feet.

I caught the smirk on his face an instant before he bolted.

Both Sam and Wanda converged on me.

"Cap."

"Are you crazy?"

They spoke on top of one another, but it didn't matter. I knew what I had to do.

I reached up and pulled out the knife, much to the dismay of both of them. Wanda magically acquired some marginally clean cloth and pressed it against the gaping wound.

"I'm fine."

"Like hell," she argued.

I sucked in a deep breath, pleased to find no hitch that could signal a punctured lung. It hurt, but the damage superficial for the most part. I searched the room for Bucky. "Where is he?"

"Took off down the driveway," Sam informed me even as he grabbed his shoes. "I'll meet you in the quinjet," he said to Wanda.

Wanda looked at him like he had turned a lovely shade of insane. "That was not _Bucky_ ," she sneered, pressing harder in her ire and making me grunt in reaction.

I never said the injury didn't hurt, I just didn't have time to let it bother me. "Exactly. We don't dare let the Soldier get anywhere near civilization."

She growled softly, eyes flashing red for an instant. "He is becoming a danger to us."

I sighed, agreeing with her, but…"He doesn't have anyone else." I looked over at Sam, who had stopped in the doorway waiting on me to make the final call. "Maybe, after this the two of you should go visit Scott, or Clint."

"Cap… Steve, we'll get through this together. Somehow. So how about we go find him and figure out the rest later." Always the pragmatic one, Sam.

"Go," I urged Wanda, "I'm fine." She glared at me. "I'll heal."

She didn't like it, but nodded and trailed after Sam.

I took five minutes to put a pressure bandage on the wound, the bleeding already slowing, but still worrying enough for me to take the time, changed my shirt, pulled on my sneakers and then headed out our back door on foot.

 

~^~^~^~^~

 

After four hours in the pouring rain I finally gave up.

Bucky… The Soldier had had roughly a ten minute head start on us and the weather had erased any trace of him within minutes. There'd been a half dozen foot prints in the mud of the road we used, but he eventually cut off into the woods where the ground swallowed up any trace of him, the floor littered with decades of pine needles and fallen leaves. I'd been able to track him for about half a mile, to an open area covered in last year's grass, now dead and brown, his route lost to the springy material.

Sam and Wanda circled overhead in an ever widening spiral looking for any sign of him. The few heat signatures of size they encountered animal in nature, deer, elk and a bear newly woken from its winter hibernation.

No sign of Bucky anywhere.

I had been soaked to the skin within minutes, but had kept going, knowing that if we didn't find him, he might remain the Soldier forever. If that happened I might just be forced to kill him to protect others.

And… and I honestly did not know if I could do that.

I hadn't been able to the last time, when he'd been far more dangerous.

Sam and Wanda beat me back to the base and had hot coffee and warm blankets waiting for me when I got there wet and bedraggled and disillusioned. She urged me into the kitchen, the warmest room in the base, especially when the stove had been going, fussing over me for staying out in the weather for so long.

They waited until I had warmed up enough to stop shivering quite so violently before voicing their concerns.

"Drink, you are still shivering," Wanda ordered and I had to wonder when she'd chosen to take on the role of den mother. Then again I hadn't really thought any of it through before heading out into the spring rain.

Aside from finding Bucky.

A task I had failed miserably at.

"He can't have gone that far, Cap." Sam settled across from me, his own cup in hand, his look as dour as my own.

I actually agreed with that, pretty certain he had backtracked and simply hidden somewhere until he could better assess the situation. In truth though… "He could be a couple hundred miles away by now, if he wanted to be."

"Frickin' super soldiers," Sam grumbled under his breath. "He would have no idea where he was, in horrible weather conditions, if it were me, I'd find a dry spot and hunker down until morning."

I nodded in agreement. "But where. We haven't really explored the area in detail. And our sat will be utterly useless right about now."

"Then we abuse google earth, figure out the most likely places he'd go based on terrain and try there in the morning." Sam looked exhausted, the stress of the afternoon getting even to him.

I ran a hand through my still wet hair in frustration. I wanted to be back out there right now, my night sight excellent, but without a direction to head in I'd just be wandering in circles again, hoping I'd stumble across his hiding place. Another set of shivers wracked my body, violent enough to cause the coffee to slosh precariously in my cup.

"Tell me you are not thinking about going back out there." Wanda must have caught the look in my eye, or had been peeking in on my thoughts, either way there was little point in denying it.

"I'll be fine. And I'll take the time to dress properly."

"And take the tranq gun?" Sam asked, the sneer not well hidden at all.

I shrugged. "Might as well. For all the good it'll do me." The dose we had worked out insanely high and wore off quickly, but should be enough to cause that hard reset needed to banish the Soldier and allow Bucky to take back control of his mind."

"You need to warm up properly first. You cannot afford to get sick," Wanda mother henned at me.

Sam snorted. "I don't think he can get sick. Least not with something as mundane as a cold. He survived being a popsicle for seventy years, I doubt the cold bothers him, anyway."

I blinked. "Did you just misquote _Frozen_ at me?"

Sam just grinned and sipped his coffee.

"I survived the crash, you know."

"Well, yeah." Sam waved at me, the fact I sat there alive and well proof of that.

"I think he means something else," Wanda said, shifting the blankets higher about my shoulders.

"You mean…" He trailed off.

I nodded. "I don't remember the crash itself, just waking up on the floor. The plane had mostly survived the impact, just buried nose first into ice and snow. Water had gotten in and everything around me had begun to freeze up." It hadn't been that bad. I'd been so cold I had no idea if I'd been badly hurt or survived the crash with only minor bumps and bruises. The pain so distant I hadn't given it a second thought.

"Christ, Cap." Sam stared at me in utter horror as his mind surely conjured up all the horrible possibilities of what I had endured. He was a smart man and most certainly knew how the cold affected the human body. Only the fact that I had been made something more than human allowed me to not only survive, but survive with my mind intact.

"You are not shivering from the cold, are you," Wanda asked, voice hushed.

"Not really," I told her. The memories brought to the surface influencing my body's reaction far more than the actual feeling of cold. I was chilled, yes, but not to any degree that would cause me any real harm. Those memories though. That feeling of helplessness as the cold temperatures slid deeper and deeper into my mind and soul… The lethargy, the urge to not fight, to give in and just let it happen, to take a moment for myself and rest for what felt like the first time in my life.

_That_ made me shiver.

Never wanting to experience it again.

Thus my intense dislike of cryochambers and horror at Bucky's willingness to return to that deep sleep. The process admittedly far quicker than what I had experienced at the hand of Mother Nature, but still the same.

Bone numbing cold and the cessation of all conscious thought.

I would never be that brave.

All the more reason to head back out into the cold, wet night.

He might just choose that lesser evil if he came back to himself and realized what he had done when his switch had been flipped. Only without a cryochamber handy he would have to find another option and…

I set down the mug and stood, shrugging the blankets from my shoulders.

I knew where he would go.


	10. Chapter 10

Dawn arrived before Bucky did, which made me thankful I had taken the time to dress for the weather. While not exactly warm I also hadn't been soaked to the skin and forced to think about dying in the cold again. Telling Wanda and Sam had been difficult enough.

It had also been the first time I had told _anyone_ that.

Not Fury. Not Natasha. Not Tony.

No one knew that I had been conscious after the crash. It seemed to be something too horrible, too personal to burden anyone else with.

Until today.

Yes, they had found it horrible, but had not shown even an ounce of pity.

They had both faced things just as horrible in their own way and it felt… not good per se, but a relief to finally share that with someone I trusted.

And I did. I trusted both of them.

When Bucky stepped up onto the ledge, I watched him for several minutes. Wet and bedraggled, hair hanging in his face and dripping, clothes soaked through as expected, but also torn and dirty. Mud and detritus on his feet and up to his knees. He'd spent the night on the move at a guess and I had to wonder how long it had taken for him to come back to himself.

"Soldat."

He didn't even twitch, just sighed heavily, head down, drops of water falling from the tips of his hair onto the wet rock. "Da."

The tone not right for the Soldier, so I knew Bucky stood there, probably full of guilt and remorse, and debating taking that swan dive if it would protect the rest of us from his alter ego. "Even if you aim for the rocks it might not be enough," I pointed out drolly.

He managed a snort and turned his head slightly to look at me, perched on the steep hillside a several yards away. "How long have you been sitting there?"

I shrugged. "A while." I got to my feet, feeling stiff and in need of a hot shower. My needs would wait though, I wanted to make certain Bucky had found his footing again. "What happened this time?"

He shook his head, water flying from his hair, visible even though the sky only marginally brighter, the heavy cloud cover and ongoing rain making it a mostly useless effort. "Her elbow hit me and… I was gone. I woke up in the woods, running. Took me almost an hour to just figure out which way was north and begin making my way back here."

"She's fine." Knowing he needed that assurance before anything else.

"Course she is. I stabbed you, not her." He growled and spun away, looking as if he wanted to bolt. To run back into the wilderness and lose himself for a while, or perhaps forever. Become some legendary wildman living in the deep woods that the locals would speak of only in hushed tones, telling tales by warm fires of their encounters with the stranger who lived in the highest peaks and eschewed all contact with the outside world.

I realized that it could have be me. That I could have walked away from this brand new world that I knew nothing about and understood even less of to live out my days alone dwelling on my past and all that I had left behind instead of trying, if poorly, to move forward. I remained unsure which would have been a better path for me. For the world, having me here and present clearly the better option, but from a personal standpoint…

I seemed to have acquired far more loss compared to what I had gained.

If I saw it as a viable option I could only image how Bucky felt.

He'd already spent two years alone dealing with his personal demons, spending a few dozen more might just look like a relief to be away from anyone else he might hurt. "Don't go," I pleaded, voice soft, and he froze, practically vibrating in place with warring emotions.

"It'd be safer," he told me, voice shaking on the words.

"For who? You or all those people you won't be able to help." Button pushing at it's best. While he feared the Soldier could appear while on a rescue mission, it had never stopped him. He still rushed in and put forth every effort to save as many as he could, as if each one saved could partially assuage the guilt of all those he had hurt over the decades.

He twisted about looking as if he wanted to scream at me, but instead all but folded in on himself, all the bluff and bluster draining out of him in an instant. "I don't want to hurt anyone," he finally whispered in pure misery.

I moved towards him, slow and steady fearing he would bolt if I came at him too quickly. I set a hand on his shoulder. "Neither do I, but I seem to be very good at it lately."

He shook his head. "But with you it's all about good intentions, me… not so much."

"Buck, did you intend to go after Wanda like that?"

He shook his head not meeting my eyes. "Of course not. Her hit… I didn't even get a chance to try and stop it. I had no control."

"And she knows that. I can promise you both of them have been worried sick about you since you ran out of the garage."

"They shouldn't be," he mumbled, but I could feel the tension release somewhat under my hand.

He'd been more concerned they would hate him. And while upset and not thrilled about what had occurred neither of them had blamed him for one second.

They gave him the benefit of doubt.

And that made a huge difference.

Others would only assume the worst, that he could never be more than the Winter Soldier, the Asset, an assassin, a killer.

Yet, of all of us, he was also the only who comforted children when their lives had been torn apart at the seams. Speaking to them with a gentleness that would never be attributed to the deadly Fist of Hydra, memories of his younger sister most likely influencing his astonishing knack with kids. He might not remember large parts of his life, but what he learned had been deeply imbedded and showed in everything he did.

He needed to forgive himself and, no matter how many times I told him that very thing, it would mean nothing until he was ready to do so. I just had to be there, support him and his decisions and wait for the day he could look in the mirror and not hate what he saw there.

"Well, you coming in or running?"

"You saying you won't stop me?"

I let my head drop down, looking at the worn rock between my feet. "I'd want to, can't deny that, but if what you need is time alone, then take it." I felt more than saw his head snap around, the weight of his eyes on me. "I believe it would be better for you to stay."

"You're sure they're not mad?"

I turned my head, trying not to grin. "Now, I didn't say that. Wanda was not thrilled you ruined one of my shirts, but they understand that you did not do it on purpose. That matters more, I think."

He pushed his hair back out of his eyes and nodded slowly. "I really gotta get handle on this," he complained bitterly.

"Yup," I agreed, "but how about we start with a hot shower and some food."

"And apologise," he added, but with a lightness I hadn't expected. "I could cook breakfast," he suggested as he turned about to begin the climb that would get us to the nearest entrance.

"I don't think that would count as an apology," I pointed out. Thanks to Wanda we had both improved, but neither of us would be able to cook much more than the basics. I could manage a decent chili or shepherd's pie these days, but I still overcooked steaks and undercooked chicken.

Bucky surprised me by laughing. "You could be right about that. Thanks, Steve."

"Anytime, Buck."

 

~^~^~^~^~

 

I don't who, if anyone, Maria had shared the data with, but she came up with a target less than a week later. This time we had a two day lead, but we had a large area to cover, the targeting only approximate, it could be off by inches or several hundred yards. She had also discovered there had been other implosions missed by everyone, some in such remote areas, or on the seabed that no one but the local flora and fauna would have noticed. It also expanded the target zone by an order of magnitude, which would make this endeavor even more challenging now.

The aerial shots, taken by a drone, of the one high up in the Himalayas, a shocking sight to behold, the side of a massive mountain just gone, the surrounding area stripped bare and looking like a nothing less than a gaping wound gouged into the planet itself.

With the additional hits added to the mix the damage became even more clear and the earth had reacted accordingly with earthquakes in an attempt to relieve the stress being caused by the implosions pulling at the skin of the planet.

I'd gone back to the message boards to try and match sales of the missing shells with the current target, but they'd gone silent, the user names purged and the threads deleted.

I feared that meant they either had what they needed or had turned elsewhere for product, it could go either way and neither would be likely to end with a happy ending.

This time the target ended up being in the bucolic hillsides of Costa Rica. Hot as hell and line of sight damn near nothing once out in the rainforests. Of course, the potential target area included both a city and the wilderness and even though the vast majority of implosions had happened in or near a city we could not assume it would happen here. So, thanks to some rushed purchases we now had a set of three drones to aid us, flying over the target zone in hopes of finding the bomb before it went off.

Maria had confirmed the presence of tesseract energy and we'd rigged sensors that would pick it up to the drones as well as handheld devices.

We split up, Bucky and Sam in the quinjet taking the jungle, while Wanda and I headed into the city, both teams using a spiral pattern to cover the most territory possible. We knew the chances the bomb had already been planted would be slim, but we would keep looking until we found the damn thing.

That first step all that mattered at this point. Without a complete version of the bomb we would never be able to disable any of them. Assuming, of course, that all of them were the same on the surface.

Christ, this had turned into such a fucking mess.

"What are you brooding over now?" Wanda asked, eyes lifting from her phone that monitored the drones to the street before us. On the outskirts of the city proper the houses were layered atop one another stretching up the side of the mountain, the roads barely wide enough for a single car, the area one of the poorer ones.

The sun hadn't quite made it over the horizon, so it remained quiet and the few people out and about didn't look at us twice. Well, didn't look at Wanda twice, her coloring closer to theirs even with the blue eyes. I stood out with my shock of blond hair not entirely hidden by the baseball cap atop my head. A gift on my birthday last year, copy of a Brooklyn Dodgers cap, the original back at the Tower, in a hermetically sealed shadow box to protect it.

I had no clue where Tony had found it, and refused to say how much it had cost him, but I had more than appreciated the gesture. Of course, just few months later everything fell apart.

I shrugged. "Not sure what you mean." She had no need to know that I worried we could make an even bigger mess of things if we succeeded here. The implosions seemed to designed to create a specific effect, if we stopped one, it would potentially make the situation and the results worse than if we just let it go off. Maria had access to better computers and people with knowledge in the fields these explosions impacted upon. Our best guesses had been just that: guesses.

The experts in tectonics she'd consulted had painted a picture far more worrisome than any I or Bucky had imagined.

"Agent Hill told you something you don't want to share," Wanda finally said and since she wasn't wrong I didn't answer. "Do you think that will stop me, stop us from trying?"

"No. It's not that."

"Then what? Steve, I understand I team needs a leader, and that said leader will need to withhold information on occasion, but this is hurting you. Let us share the burden."

I sighed heavily, stopping the middle of the empty road. A cat wandered further down, watching us warily, strangers in it's territory. "What if it is already too late?" If she needed details I would give them to her, but I felt certain she'd figure it out on her own.

She stared at me for long minutes as her mind chewed on those words and their possible meaning. I saw the realization in her eyes the instant she put it all together. She began swearing in Sokovian, which made my lips twitch slightly in morbid humor.

We'd known since discovering the plan had been on of Ultron's that the ultimate goal to be the destruction of the human race, but the tipping point, the moment when turning back would not be an option hadn't been. Hell, we hadn't even thought about it.

Maria Hill had.

"Can it be reversed?"

I shook my head. "They don't know."

Wanda closed her eyes for a long moment, sucked in a deep breath that came out ragged and torn. "We can't just give up," she argued, but her voice had been rendered hoarse and raw.

"We could. Others are aware now, with better resources. We could let them take over, and maybe succeed." I'd thought about it, a lot, since I'd been informed of the truth, that this fight had quite possibly already been lost and that nothing we did from here on out would make a bit of difference in the end.

Tilting at windmills.

"No," she stated vehemently. "We fight. We do everything in our power to fix this."

I set a hand on her shoulder. "Which is why we are here." I hadn't doubted for an instant how any of them would have reacted to this news; I simply hadn't wanted to burden them with the knowledge. No need for their nights to be any more sleepless than they already had been. So I'd taken the burden on. Much as I seemed to with everything else. I kept secrets, just like anyone else did. Only those I kept seemed to end up hurting people I cared about in the end.

Maybe I wasn't cut out for this superhero gig after all.

" _Cap, we got a hit."_

I dragged myself out of my mental musing at Sam's words. "Location?"

" _Three klicks east of your position. Drone picked it up, I'm sending the others there now to confirm."_

"We're on our way." I turned to Wanda whose look hard hardened. "Ready for this?"

She managed a half-hearted smile for my benefit. "Always."

Needing to not draw attention to ourselves, we took our time getting there. Walking briskly at most so it took nearly thirty minutes to find the location, three drones hovering overhead, the sensors in our hands also signalling the presence of the unique energy related to the tesseract.

We ended up in a neighborhood garden. Tiny, yes, but full of life, and the only open area around we'd seen aside from the streets themselves. "It's not here, unless it was buried months ago."

Wanda turned a slow circle in an attempt to narrow the target area. She stopped facing southwest and pointed. "That way."

We skirted the edges of the garden and made our way down a narrow alley, the drones following along overhead. "Bucky, contact Hill and let her know we may need a pick up."

" _On it_ ," came the quick response.

We, my team, did not have the necessary tech or skills to figure out the damn thing, so I'd agreed to allow Hill's team to take possession once we'd found it. With us constantly looped in on what they discovered. I didn't ask who would be working on it, but suspected Tony would be involved in some manner. There just weren't many in the world who could deal with this level of tech quickly, and it wasn't as if the Avengers hadn't been trying to discover and stop these weapons all along, we had simply ended up being a couple steps ahead thanks to being there when the first implosion in Prague happened.

The trackers led us to a seemingly empty building, which struck me as odd, but I didn't bother to question Dame Fortuna this time around. The interior dark and the air stagnant, as if no one had been in here in an exceedingly long time, the dust thick on the floor except for a single trail of footprints.

The tracker seemed to follow the line of prints in the dust.

I squatted down, running my fingers through the void of the shoeprint. My fingers came up nearly clean. "These are recent, a day at most."

Wanda nodded. "I don't like this place," she informed me in a soft voice. Not frightened, just worried. The bomb could go off at any moment and we were all but standing atop it.

I wondered if she had become sensitive to tesseract energy given her powers had been created using the Sceptre. It wouldn't surprise me given we had definitely moved into the realm of the unknown.

"You can wait outside if you like. Guard the entrance," I offered, but she quickly shook her head.

"No. I'm fine," she assured me and moved to follow the path already laid out before us.

It led to a solid metal door that had been locked. Wanda made short work of it and I opened it with care, wary of potential booby traps to protect the weapon we suspected to be on the other side.

A steep set of stairs went down, looking to have been carved into the mountain itself. We both flipped on bright LED flashlights and made our way down with care. The steps not new, both them and the walls worn with age and decorated with a combination of artwork and graffiti.

After nearly ten minutes of constant downward motion we came to the end and another door, the lock dispatched just as easily.

We opened it to a slaughterhouse.

Wanda gagged at the sight of so much dried blood cast about so carelessly. At least a dozen bodies, all male and in their mid to late twenties. Tables had been tipped over scattering various bits of apparatus across the floor. A thin layer of white powder lay over everything.

Wanda muttered in Sokovian, covering her mouth and nose with her the sleeve of her shirt. "Cocaine," she informed me and I used the sleeve of my jacket to create a filter as well. The drug probably wouldn't harm me, but no need to find out here and now.

So this had been some drug cartel's cutting room and someone, had removed those in charge with prejudice. If the workers had been killed I would have expected far more bodies, most likely women and young children conscripted to do the actual work.

Instead only armed men had been killed.

Odd. Why let the innocents go if all you were going to do was blow them to hell anyway?

Unless one of said innocents had been encouraged to plant the bomb in exchange for being freed from virtual slavery and given the opportunity to escape what would be coming in the near future.

The long game would mostly likely kill them anyway, but they didn't need to know that, did they?

I stepped with care as I moved through the room, looking for anything that might be the weapon we searched for.

There were several rooms off of the main one, primitive sleeping pallets in each, for the workers most likely, then what could only be the office, much more richly appointed than the rest. One body, slumped over in a chair dead from a headshot, but the rest undisturbed.

Except for the quite obvious bomb sitting on the desk.

A screen reminiscent of that on a cell phone glowed softly, but with no timer or anything similar visible, just the blank screen. The shell identical to the ones we'd recovered in Austria.

It didn't look capable of the massive destruction created by all the others, but we could not see into it. Had no clue what made it tick and we would not being trying to find out. The so-called experts could have a go at it, I'd be far more likely to set the damn thing off by accident.

Wanda held up her phone, the tracker going crazy now that we stood next to the thing.

"Is this where I say Bingo?"

I tapped my comms. "Sam?"

The response came through broken, static laden and completely incomprehensible.

"Wanda can you relay a message through the drones?" I didn't want to leave the thing alone in case that screen came to life.

"I'll try." She tapped the screen of her phone for several seconds, then shook her head. "Signal is too weak. I'll head up and tell them to send the recovery team in."

"Warn them they'll need strong stomachs and masks unless they want a free high."

She snorted, some color returning to her cheeks at the gallows humor. "I'll be back."

I nodded and watched until the light of her flash had been lost up the stairwell.

I looked over the main room, the wasted lives and, for a moment, felt that they might very well be the lucky ones, dead already and not forced to suffer through what would be coming.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I got a tad sidetracked. It happens. I've broken this up into smaller chapters than usual simply because it otherwise would have been the length of a novella. I still have some editing to do on the end bit, but I should have the rest posted within the week. Thanks for sticking around for this one.

 

I knew the news would not be good the moment I heard her voice.

"Hill, what happened?"

" _The bomb went off en route to the secure lab. We lost the recovery team."_ She remained stoic, but I knew her and that she hurt at the loss of the men and women who had been on the quinjet.

"Damn it. I'm sorry, Maria." Nothing I said could ease the pain, and it shouldn't. Yes, those there had been doing their jobs and knew the risks had been high. Still, no one goes to work with the certainty they would die that day.

" _Two steps forward, one step back,"_ she groused, focusing on the lack of good intel due to the implosion to keep from being overwhelmed by the loss of lives.

"Do we know if it went off when it was supposed to to or-"

" _Or if they set it off because they knew we had it? No clue. Timing was within the predicted window, extreme range, but possible. I'll send you the data and video they recorded in flight. It's interesting, to say the least._ "

"Just tell me they didn't lose their lives for nothing."

" _Steve, remember that you saved the lives of everyone living near that thing. That must be worth something_."

"Worth everything," I assured her. "Doesn't mean I don't regret the loss."

" _True enough. We might have enough data to either disable or at least contain the worst of the implosions. We're running sims now and I will keep you looped in."_

"This will change the prediction table," I warned her. We'd broken the pattern and the area would continue to be watched in case someone tried again there, hopefully, we could prevent another bomb being planted at that location. Which meant they, whoever the hell _they_ were would need to adjust if they wanted to guarantee success.

Of course, there stood the chance that us removing that bomb could worsen things. That particular simulation still being worked on, as well as one to predict what might happen should we actually succeed and shut down this effort at global destruction completely.

We could be doomed either way.

" _I know, but all we can do is adapt and hope we can get ahead of them. I'll make contact in three days with an update."_

"Maria..." I didn't know what to say. Nothing would bring back those lost to the implosion, and nothing I said would make it better for any of us.

Just one more stone for Sisyphus to push up that steep, never-ending hillside.

It seemed that one moment of peace, true peace, had become too much to hope for. So, I kept doing the only thing I knew; punching my way out of situations.

" _I know, Steve."_ And with that, she disconnected leaving me with the task of informing my team that everything had gone to hell once again.

 

~^~^~^~^~

 

Needless to say, the Hydra base hunt had been put on hold.

Which meant we did little more than train and plan how we would handle the next attempt at retrieving one of the bombs. The prediction sims had become a confused mess and after two tries with no bomb discovered and none going off anywhere in the world, we took a step back and to reassess the situation. I presumed those invisible bad guys had done the same, probably needing to make adjustments to account for the one misfire and our efforts to stop them.

Hydra I had understood. Yes, they wanted chaos to create their own version of control, but their targets, especially with the Insight program, had been specific; people who would stand against them and challenge them. Not the destruction of the populace at large. Plus, Hydra had been decimated. All the heads supposedly cut off thanks to the efforts of SHIELD and the ATCU.

I got so desperate for any intel I reached out to my few remaining sources within that damaged agency, but only two responded. One with a noncommittal 'I'll get back to you.' And the other, Mockingbird, with a 'Sorry. Burned and on the run.'

To the former, I sent a just as noncommittal 'thanks' and to the latter the offer of a safe haven should she be in need of it. Bobbi Morse had been one hell of an agent and I hoped the loss of her job had been worth it. I made a mental note to keep in contact with her, even on the run she wouldn't be able to keep her nose out of the business, probably need to bury it in even further in to keep ahead of those after her.

Who knew what bit of useful intel she might stumble across on her adventures.

Just in case, I sent her the coordinates of a few of the abandoned Hydra bases we'd checked out, knowing they could provide her a respite from running should she require it.

I'd be more than happy to have her watching my back on a mission if she ever decided to come in from the cold.

Our personal cold front had been spending the majority of his time as far from us as possible and refusing to train with anyone but me. There hadn't been any other incidents that I had been made aware of, but he clearly feared harming Wanda or Sam should his switch get flipped again.

He needed to stop being afraid, but I had no idea how to convince him of that. The information in his head valuable beyond measure and would give us intel on Hydra's moves for the majority of the last century, but only if he were willing to delve into them.

Maybe that was the issue, those memories, the ones from his days as the Soldier stronger than those of the man.

So I hatched a plan.

 

~^~

 

"Buck, you don't have to go through all these files by yourself."

I'd found him in the furthest corner from the entrance, the thick dust disturbed and floating in the air about us, the air circulation not quite enough to clear it out. He sat cross-legged on the floor, back against one of the uprights, boxes stacked next to him, flies spread in a half circle about him on the floor, a fairly thick one in his hands.

He lifted his head slowly and sighed heavily enough to disturb the dust that lingered on the obviously old file. I stepped around those on the floor and leaned over to see what he had in his hands. I should have known better. The words were all in Cyrillic lettering, which I barely read on a good day and upside down would be near impossible, but the pictures, old, cracked and faded, I knew.

All were of Bucky.

A badly injured Bucky.

And that meant…

"That's your file."

He nodded. "The full version as opposed to the one Zemo found." He waved at a box. "There's even a carefully transcribed copy of the Red Book. Not complete, since they shut this place down before I got out, but it's all there."

Every hit. Every kill. Every assassination. Every crime he'd ever committed for Hydra in the boxes piled about him.

But the one he held in his hand from the beginning.

From when there'd still be some of James Barnes left.

Before the Winter Soldier had become all he knew.

This should be the last thing Bucky spent his days reading. He already wasted his days wallowing in the guilt for all he had done. He had pulled away to protect us, not because he _wanted_ to hurt anyone. I thought I'd been honoring his need for space, instead, all I had done was permit him to drown, to sink deeper into the mire of emotions and depression and regret he could not seem to get his head above except for a rare moment here and there.

I tugged it out of his hands, a touch surprised he let me take it, closed the damn thing and set it atop one of the boxes. "Get up and put some real clothes on."

He tipped his head back, hitting the metal beam with a fairly solid thunk that made me wince in sympathy. "Why? I'm seriously not in the mood to train and do not want to go for a run."

"Good. We've got things to do and places to be." I held out my hand, which he stared at for nearly a minute before grasping and permitting me to help him upright. "Real clothes as there will be other humans about."

"Steve…" he grumbled.

"Just do it, okay?"

I don't know what he saw in my face, but he nodded with only a hint of reluctance. "Fifteen minutes?"

"Sure. Meet me in the quinjet."

He sighed and led the way out of the file room.

 

~^~^~^~

 

I took us home.

I hadn't been back since moving to the Compound. Oh, I'd been to New York, Stark Tower, but not back to Brooklyn. It hadn't been the same place that I remembered, but it had still felt like home, the memories, however, hurt more than helped and I had avoided going there unless necessary.

But for Bucky...

He'd been spending too much time trying to deal with his past, wanting to repent for all the horrible things he'd been forced to do over the years. The Winter Soldier too close to the surface on most days and no matter how hard he tried to hold on. The amalgam personality too much of the Soldier and not enough of Bucky.

Time to remind him of who he used to be.

We'd landed at an old SHIELD base that had been shut down after DC, but never re-purposed, and dressed as civilians we took the train back into Brooklyn.

"What are we doing? In case you've forgotten, we're wanted men."

"Buck, no one will care," I assured him. Given how many times I'd wandered the streets of New York unnoticed and unrecognized, I had little concern today. Only after the Battle of New York and joining SHIELD had people begun to stop me on the street for autographs and selfies. Unless the locals actually paid attention, which would be atypical for New Yorkers, no one would know us from Job.

"They don't want you dead," he groused, but walked beside me, head down, cap low on his forehead, not looking up any more than necessary.

I wore a hat and sunglasses as well, not wanting to push my luck no matter what I believed to be true. "Not everyone, maybe." I glanced back over my shoulder, the shadow of the Tower looming over me no matter that we could not even see it from where we were. I doubted Tony would be there, but the possibility made me wary though I made certain not to let it show on my face or in my demeanor.

Bucky snorted. "True enough. So why here?"

I pulled out my phone, pressed a selection of keys and handed it to him. He stared at it, then me wondering if I had gone insane based on the expression that skittered across his face before being replaced with a carefully neutral look. "Hold it up."

He sighed but did so. At first, he appeared to be bored, then his brows came together in confusion, not quite understanding what the images on the phone meant, but when it registered...

"How... What?" He turned a full three-sixty, eyes going from the phone to the cityscape before him and back. And in that moment Bucky, my Bucky filled his eyes and he gazed about at the world through the images generated in my phone in wonder.

"There's an app for that," I told him. I had gone looking for pictures of the city we'd grown up in from when we'd last been here, figuring I'd show him the pics as we did a walking tour of the city, only to discover others had created walking tours that included pics from dozens of eras. Given Captain America had been born here and grown up playing on these streets I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to discover an entire segment on Brooklyn, with a focus on the local neighborhood we'd lived in.

There were days that I definitely appreciated the improvements in technology.

He started walking, focused on the images being generated on the phone. I trailed along, making certain he didn't walk into anyone and just waited, waited for the memories to spark something in him.

We turned a corner and he stopped dead. "How many times did you get beat up in that alley?"

I looked over his shoulder to see the image and orient, I had a rough idea where we were, but what had been here a hundred years ago? I snorted. "Several. Between the diner and the movie theater, this was a popular spot for fights."

"So same as always," he pointed out with a grin. "Are either of those still around?"

I debated for an instant just telling him but instead shrugged. "Let's find out."

 

~^~

 

We spent the entire afternoon wandering about our old stomping grounds, reminiscing about days… lives gone by. Every moment, every turn I saw more and more of Bucky my friend and less of the man I'd been living with for the last several months. The guilt and remorse fading as he recalled events from a past that Hydra had tried so hard to erase.

I had no idea who he wanted to be, but for today he seemed to find a kind of peace in recalling who he had been once upon a time. We had a couple slices for lunch, a pizza joint built on the bones of one that had been there when we'd been kids, and no one had even glanced over at us. New Yorkers had changed all that much over the decades.

The sun had gone down, though the city seemed no darker as we got off the train and headed back to where I'd parked our ride, the tempo of the city changing about us with the shift from day to night.

"Steve."

"Yeah, Buck?" When he didn't respond right away I took a guess. "Still hungry? We could grab something to take with us." I glanced about, pretty sure a sub shop or three would be within easy spitting distance.

He cast a sideways glance over at me then said softly, "Thank you."

"For what?" We turned the last corner, the building we'd parked atop of within sight, yet my steps slowed.

"For reminding me that I'm more than an assassin. That the Winter Soldier is not all that I am, but…"

"But?"

"But I'm not him anymore. Not the man you remember; the man I barely remember. He's gone and… and I don't think I can be him again."

I sighed softly, shifting out of the flow of the foot traffic on the sidewalk with us, to lean back against the solid brick of the building and rub my forehead. "I know that. I'd like to stick around to find out who you are if that's okay."

He nodded slowly. "Might be a good plan. I'm a bit too dangerous to be on my own these days."

I didn't argue the point. His bad days tended to bad for everyone involved, no matter how hard he tried to be good, sometimes the Winter Soldier made an unscheduled appearance. Occasionally useful, but far more often less so. We'd adapted, but all of us were tired of knocking Bucky out to get his alter ego to leave. He didn't yet have control over it, which could actually be useful, all the information the Hydra version had could only help our cause.

"That'll change, Buck. I believe it even if you don't."

He shrugged, meeting my eyes for an instant. "You always had faith. Even when you shouldn't."

"Are you saying I should listen to those who think you are nothing but the monster they made you into."

"Maybe they're right," he stated in a tiny voice.

"They're not," I assured him.

"How can you know that?" he questioned, voice plaintive.

"Because you remembered."

"So?"

"So, it proves you are more than just some mindless drone. More than what they tried to make you into." I shook my head. "You are a good man, Bucky, don't let them take that away from you."

He stared at me for a long moment then shook his head, chuckling softly. "You always were a stubborn little shit."

"Had to be growing up around here," I reminded, getting a grin for my efforts. It had been a hard life, but with Bucky by my side a good one.

"True 'nuff," he agreed then straightened, his entire demeanor changing in a second.

I glanced around not seeing anything, but the hairs on the back of my neck stood up just the same. "Time to go."

"Yeah. I think we may have outstayed our welcome." He hunched his back as if trying to hide from prying eyes, then gave up and tried to watch every direction at once.

"Move," I told him and we did, walking, but wary of everything. We'd spent more than enough time in various war zones to know when the situation had changed. Someone had figured out where we were, but I had no clue how as I truly believed none of the locals had made a call turning us in.

We paused, waiting for a light to change, only a block away from where the quinjet had been safely hidden when I realized how I'd fucked up.

Cameras.

Ones out of our direct control. Red light cameras. CCTV, which, while not prevalent, still existed in this corner of New York. ATMs, security, on the train, in the train station, and yes, probably random cell phone pics.

All it took was one data mining program looking for our image and anyone would know where we were. While we hadn't intentionally stuck our face in front of a camera, we'd probably been caught on dozens.

"How many you clock?"

"Half dozen at least."

"Anything we can't handle?"

"Depends on what weapons they're carrying, I s'pose." He glanced around. "We need to pick where we stand our ground. Too many civilians here."

"No shit. Best place is gonna be where the quinjet is. It's abandoned and solid if we can get them inside…"

"Then we'll be on even footing," he finished. "Any chance we have weapons?"

"Only if we can get to the quinjet before they converge on us."

He made a fist with his left hand, the metal of his knuckles creaking audibly. "Punching our way out it is then."

I clapped him on the shoulder. "Not like it'll be the first time."

He sighed heavily. "Seems appropriate. I'd be shocked if we got out of Brooklyn without you ending up in a fight."

I laughed. "Just like old times then."

"Well, I'm hoping you're better in a fight now."

"I guess we'll find out."

 

~^~

 

We made it into the building just before they converged on us. They tried for subtle, but, given we'd spotted them blocks ago, missed the mark by a wide margin. They forced their way in the door intending to catch us by surprise, but we'd been waiting for them, the windows tinted to our advantage so we'd taken up position to either side of the doors.

We let the first pair in and took out the second, using them as shields when the first pair spun about to fire their weapons at us, hitting their compatriots instead. The weapons, some type of taser, similar to the one I'd been hit with on that oil rig. The electricity transmitting through the one I held to my hands just enough to feel the tingle, but not nearly enough to slow me down. I shoved the now unconscious man at the other two, only one getting out of the way, the other going down under the weight of the unconscious man.

Bucky had used a similar tactic on the pair coming through the door, using his human shield to force them back outside and slamming the doors shut and locking them. It wouldn't keep them out for long, but even a few seconds would give us a chance to breathe. Somehow he'd managed to hold onto the weapon and, with a scary efficiency, shot the two still moving, the one dropping while the other went from struggling to get free to napping.

"They're wearing body armor under the civvies," he informed me, which meant this could not be random or dumb luck, they'd planned this.

"I'm a fucking idiot," I muttered, mostly at myself. I leaned down and pulled the comms device off one of them, but it had died when the shock had put the wearer down. "Dead," I told Buck, who just shrugged.

"If there's more they're already on the way. Let's just get to the 'jet and get out of here."

The loud thud rattling the doors in their frame more than enough to make me agree, even though I kind of wanted to know who they worked for. With a glance over at Bucky, we ran for the stairwell.

Four men who didn't bother trying to blend in, the armor in full view alongside the weaponry, met us when we burst through the door to the roof. They'd known we were coming, of course, but foolishly waited before firing, which gave Bucky more than enough time to fire twice before they reacted to our arrival.

This time, however, the armor absorbed the electric current, and neither man did more than flinch slightly before returning fire. I dove to the side, managed a somewhat controlled roll and regained my feet in time to see Bucky throw one of them a fair dozen feet across the roof. He'd closed with them faster than they'd been able to react and making their weapons all but useless.

Ranged weapons rarely worked well in close quarters.

Oh, they tried, but he batted the guns away every time one even attempted to point at him.

I waded in peeling the men away and delivering blows that made them grunt, the armor clearly designed to absorb the hits we could give them. So I went for the face, making certain that when I connected they would go down and stay down.

In less than five minutes all four were sprawled in ungainly unconscious heaps who would probably require medical attention when they awoke.

"Who the hell are they?" Bucky growled once the fur had stopped flying.

I didn't get a chance to respond, the roof door swinging open and those left able to move barreling through. Bucky unceremoniously shot them, dropping them mere feet from the door. He'd barely glanced in their direction, practically shooting blind and had hit them dead on with nary a wasted movement.

While I hadn't forgotten how good a shot he was, I just hadn't seen it in a while. Shooting me in the back didn't really count, or the leg, or the side. That had been before the programming had broken completely.

"Get the quinjet started. I'll see if they have any ID and we'll get the hell out of here." I began rifling through the pockets of those in the full armor and quickly found IDs and badges of sorts, along with patches on the shoulders. I ripped one off as the engines of the 'jet roared to life, the insignia looking familiar to me for some reason.

A couple of them began to groan themselves back to awareness and I took that as my cue to leave.

I hopped into the back of the quinjet, hitting the ramp close button. "Let's get out of here."

The quinjet lifted up into the air and, once high enough, he punched it, getting us as far away as possible as quickly as possible.

Items in hand I settled into the seat behind him.

"Not quite the homecoming you wanted."

"Not really. But I guess I should have expected it." I mean, half the world had on us a most wanted list of one kind or another I guess I should have expected someone to come for us if we permitted ourselves to be left vulnerable, which we had.

"They aren't military, officially anyway. Probably one of those private security companies," he summed up, probably accurately. He may have been on ice for nearly as long as myself, but Hydra had made certain he had all the information he needed for any and every situation. Hell, who knew how many former Hydra agents had taken up the mantle of private security to hide and further their twisted goals.

I glanced down at the patch I'd taken. A stylistic shield and spear with ASC above it. "Ares. Middle of the road security company who are more than willing to take on a bounty or two if it's worth their while."

"I take it we're worth their while?" He set the autopilot and spun the chair about to watch me with a wary gaze.

"Not me. You. I've seen what people are willing to pay to get your hands on you. Lucky for us they wanted you alive."

"How is that lucky?" he grumbled, both hands balling into fists.

"They could have just shot you in the head and taken the body with them," I told him in a sardonic tone.

He chuckled dryly. "You have a good point there. Fuck. Why did they want me?"

I shrugged and after a moment of debate told him the truth. "Requests range from wanting you dead in revenge for someone you killed to wanting to use you as The Soldier. Some just want you for intelligence gathering." Meaning they thought he, or the Soldier rather, knew something, some valued piece of intel that had not turned up via other sources. When Nat had opened the SHIELD/Hydra files to the world, those with an interest quickly discovered that not everything had been stored there. Lots of files had been retained elsewhere, the Winter Soldier a prime example of that. Compartmentalization keeping some secrets hidden from even from those few remaining Hydra agents. Zemo had learned about the project through those released files, but not the details he'd wanted. He'd been forced to go to the Siberian facility itself to get the full details of that one mission.

We had reams of data in our new home that could probably destroy entire nations if released to the public at large. Huh. That could possibly an avenue of making money should we need it. Blackmail the intel we have, least the bits that were still of actual value. Yeah, we'd piss off a lot of people, but it was a potential bargaining chip I couldn't dismiss out of hand.

"I don't know anything with any reliability or certainty," he grumbled not meeting my eyes. "It's times like this I wish I could just forget everything. Start over without a clue who Bucky or the Winter Soldier are." He shot a look at me as if waiting for the admonishment, but I wouldn't be giving him one, not today.

Had to admit to wanting to do the same a time or two. To just not be me and have the weight of the world resting on my oh so tired shoulders. "Buck, if that were a real option… I'd probably join you."

"There's always cryo. Go under and stay there for another hundred years."

He had a point, but with what we'd been dealing with there might not be a world to wake up to. "Not dismissing the idea out of hand, but the next singularity might strip the atmosphere from the planet, so how about we make certain it's gonna stick around for another century before discussing playing Rip Van Winkle."

He snorted, real amusement in those usually moody eyes of his. "I don't want to spend my whole life fighting wars, Steve."

Neither did I.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So after rewatching CA:TFA I realized I had a major brainfart where it came to the tesseract and after much browbeating figured out how to correct it. So, Steve isn't the dumbass, I am.

  


The building burned about me… about us. Flames and heat and explosions as we began the climb upward, the only area not yet engulfed in flames. The Red Skull not about to leave anything behind for the Allies to make use of no matter how much it cost him and the Third Reich.

Zola made certain they escaped, leaving me and Bucky to our fate. I'd found him alive, no chance in hell I'd lose him now. So I jumped the gap, through the flames and smoke to land on the far side; our way out the same one Zola had taken, back down with the building shuddering and shedding fascia the whole terrifying race down.

We exited the garage to find all the men that had survived the fight to escape waiting, watching the place of their imprisonment burn down with an unholy glee in their eyes.

"You are the craziest son of a bitch I have ever had the pleasure of meeting." Dum Dum Dugan clapped me on the shoulder. "Who the hell sent you?"

I told him the truth. "No one. I… I'm kinda AWOL."

"Even bigger balls than I thought. All right, Captain, you got a plan to get us out of here?"

I reached into my jacket for the radio only to discover it had taken a bullet for me at some point in time. "Well, I did," I muttered, tucking the useless piece of equipment back into the pocket, my fingers brushing against another item. I pulled it out. The small… battery for lack of a better description still glowing with the blue light emitted by the Hydra weapons. I'd never even imagined weapons like the ones Schmidt had created so I knew this and all the other ones we'd acquired during the firefight would be of great importance to the Allies, if only we could get back across the border and report to General Phillips who would probably happily throw me into the brig and leave him there to rot.

I didn't care. I looked over at Bucky, who seemed nothing less than relieved to no longer be strapped to that gurney, and thanked God I'd managed to do the impossible and save my friend. Even if I spent the next twenty years behind bars it would have been more than worth it.

I scanned the crowd about me, all of these men looking to me, the trained monkey, for leadership, including Bucky. So I took a breath and did what seemed to make the most sense. "Patch up the injured the best you can, those that can't walk load 'em onto the tank. We need to get moving before the Nazi's decided to investigate why the mountain decided to explode."

They stared at me for a long moment then Dugan barked, "You heard the Captain, stop acting like a bunch a'rookies and get moving."

At those words, everyone moved and less than ten minutes later, armed to the teeth with Hydra weapons, we walked away from the factory and prison camp headed towards safety.

 

~^~

 

"So, remember when I rescued the 107th?"

Bucky cocked a single eyebrow at me. "Uh, yeah. What about it?"

"I dreamed about it last night and realized we've been making all the wrong assumptions about the power source."

"How so?" Wanda asked turning slightly to look at me, fork playing with the scrambled eggs on her plate. "I thought we had determined the power source was the tesseract?"

I nodded. "I was wrong." So very wrong and it had nearly cost us the world.

Sam shook his head. "That blue energy is the same as what's in the records for the Hydra weapons."

Bucky tapped the counter with a single metal finger, the sound bright and loud in the sudden silence. "Didn't Zola use the tesseract as an energy source? Or is my scrambled brain more scrambled than usual?"

Sam snorted into his coffee. "No, your memory is accurate. We… the SSR… SHIELD never figured out how though."

A fact which I had discovered mere weeks after waking up from my seventy-year slumber. "We don't need to find the tesseract to slow these things down. Just need to find the power sources."

Sam rubbed his face in his hands while Wanda scrunched up her face in confusion. "What power sources?" she requested tone only a touch plaintive.

I pulled up the images on my tablet and held it up for her to see. Granted they were in black and white and thus lacked the blue glow the originals had, but it still remained obvious what they were.

"Aren't those the power cells Zola came up with?" Sam questioned.

"Yes."

"And you think that's what's powering the bombs," Sam concluded. "Is that possible?"

"Maybe Hydra figured out how to use the tesseract and didn't share with their goody-goody alter ego?" Bucky suggested.

Wanda cocked her head to the side. "I don't believe so, else why go through all the trouble to create me and my brother." Her eyes flashed red for an instant, an unneeded reminder of what she could do.

"Yeah, they would have used those weapons during the incident if they'd had 'em," Sam pointed out. "So that means someone stumbled on an old cache of them, still powered up and waiting to go."

"Oh, that's not good," Bucky muttered setting his fork on the edge of his plate then began to rub his forehead with his right hand. "How many caches did Schmidt have?"

"Enough," I groused, "and it would appear that the battery life is exceedingly long."

"So how do we stop 'em?" Sam questioned, gesturing with his fork, the piece of waffle dripping syrup, but staying in place where it had been stuck by the tines. "I mean, we don't even know if they've all been taken or if piles of them are still waiting around to be discovered."

I sighed softly. I'd thought of all these things already. "We need to retask our satellites to look for the tesseract energy signature. If enough of them are together it'll pick them up."

"So, we're calling Lang in," Wanda stated.

"He's already on his way," I confirmed. I hated dragging him away from his family, but if we didn't solve this riddle soon none of us would have much of a chance. "If they're all distributed we've got a much bigger problem."

Bucky nodded. "The sats won't pick them up. We'll be back to drones and handhelds with limited range."

"And if they decide to set off multiple devices at once?" Wanda just had to bring up the one subject I had tried to not consider.

"There is no optimal solution here. And unless we can prevent the explosions, lives will be lost even with the containment."

"Does Hill know?" Sam questioned.

I shook my head. "I don't know if I should tell her about the power source."

"Why not?" Wanda sounded incredulous. We'd trusted Hill this far, in for a penny in for a pound at this point.

"Because what she knows Tony knows and therefore Ross knows and I sure as hell don't want him to get ahold of active Hydra tech." Sam kept the sneering tone mostly hidden, but he clearly had no love for the man who had incarcerated them on The Raft.

"Or SHIELD. I doubt those Phase II weapons got melted down." Bucky shrugged his shoulder when I snapped my head about to look at him. "What? I'm not wrong."

"No, you're not." I didn't bother wondering how he knew about Phase II, he'd spent more than enough time in recent months pouring over the files Natasha had released, which included all the Phase II plans. The encryptions had been tough, but he'd broken them without too much difficulty. Clearly, Hydra had taught him more than how to kill. "I'm not certain what to do with this information."

"You tell them," Wanda stated unequivocally. "You call Hill and tell her what you've discovered."

I shifted slightly to meet her serious gaze. "Why?"

"Because if you don't the entire human race will be dead and it won't matter who has access to that Hydra tech. No one will be left alive to care."

I glanced over at the others, all of whom nodded in agreement with Wanda's proclamation. "And the consequences should we survive?"

"We'll deal with them and Ross later. We save the fucking day now," Sam's tone brooked no argument and I could only wonder if he realized we might not survive this time. That saving the day might require us, all of us to sacrifice our lives to ensure the world kept spinning and humanity kept going on.

"So we're agreed, we'll deal with the consequences later."

"Jeez, Steve, we do our jobs same as always," Bucky informed me, the only one of us reluctant to take on the role of hero, even though as a Howlie he'd been one. "We have a ton of work to do after, let's finish this ASAP."

"After?" Wanda questioned, lifting the cup of coffee to her lips to take a sip.

Sam groaned, eyes rolling as he quickly sorted through the clean up that would need to be done. He raised a hand and ticked off the basics on his fingers. "Find the source of the power units. Track down those who have been building and planting the bombs, which may or may not be the same people. Then… then we still have to figure out who wanted us all dead. And those are the big ones. About a dozen other minor loose ends to tie up as well."

Clearly, we'd had too much down time recently if Sam had been considering all that came after. Still, he wasn't wrong. If, and it was a big damn if, we survived this we wouldn't have time for a breather after, the work would continue until this threat had been eliminated completely.

"All right. I'll update Hill and see if we can work on finding the cache and prevent anyone else from getting ahold of these batteries." I looked over at Bucky. "I want you and Wanda to go through the Archives, hit the sections most likely to have info on where they were stored. Give us a place to look until they get a workable method of detecting the energy signature via sat."

Bucky cocked an eyebrow at me, but he knew the Archive the best given he hid in there regularly. Plus Scott had figured out the key to the code, which made it relatively easy to figure out what each box contained. "Yeah, I think I know where to look." He stood and glanced over at Wanda who sighed, but slid off her stool, coffee mug in hand.

"We'll let you know if we find anything of use." Obviously, she didn't expect to, but the lack of argument meant even she thought it to be worth the effort.

I glanced over at Sam.

"I'll see if I can reconfigure our satellites to track the tesseract energy. I should be able to transfer over the program from the handhelds without too much trouble."

I nodded and watched him leave, a frown on his face, probably realizing this would be nothing more than a shot in the dark. The chances of the cache being big enough for us to easily track unlikely even though we had no real idea how many of them had been produced versus used up. All we could say with reasonable certainty was how many had been used in recent months. There could be hundreds if not thousands more out there with just as much power in them as the day they'd been created. That tiny amount of tesseract energy undimmed by the decades that had passed by.

I got to my feet and paced the now empty kitchen; still reluctant to call Hill even though it was the right thing to do. I still feared that if found by anyone other than myself and my team the power would be abused. Used against those who were different, the Inhumans, myself and others who had refused to sign either the Accords or the Inhuman Registration Act. No, not every single one of them was a good person by any stretch of the imagination, but most were. Most just wanted to go about their lives the way they always had. Not be forced to live in fear that if they said or did the wrong thing, for whatever reason they'd be ambered or cryoed and made to disappear to protect humanity.

They were human, just as much as those without gifts. Those enhancements made them no better or worse than those without, but I had no way to convince more than the tiniest portion that me and mine were no different, had the same wants and fears as everyone else.

I thought I had left behind the discrimination, sneering looks and jibes when I joined Project Rebirth. The wheel had turned, coming back to the same place where I had started, only now they jeered me for being stronger than them instead of weaker.

Made me wonder why I bothered. Why I put myself between them and harm when in the end they really wanted to pretend I didn't exist; that they needed me and those like me to solve problems they couldn't.

Maybe… maybe the time had come to protect my own first. Starting with myself.

I pulled out my phone and called Hill.

 

~^~^~^~

 

"Oh, that's not good," Lang muttered then hit a few more keys with a frown on his face.

I sighed heavily and glanced up at the screen. The spread out map of the world with glowing blue pinpricks all over the place. Literally all over the place, though the majority were on land masses, about a dozen speckled the oceans including above the arctic circle. Though that one could potentially be leftover residue from the Valkyrie given the depth of the ocean there. A surface explosion would do little but suck thousands of gallons of water into the void, which would be bad in its own right, but not pull at the skin of the planet bad. Antarctica had a speck of as well, though given the landmass underneath had never been well charted there was no way currently to know if lay on or near a fault, though at a wild guess it probably did.

"That… that's a lot of hits," Sam pointed out, his voice higher than normal in surprise.

"Any concentration strong enough to suggest a cache?" I asked, hoping to cut the source off sooner rather than later, though from the look of the map we were too late by weeks if not years.

Scott shook his head. "No, but if it's any reasonable depth underground we won't pick it up anyway. This is all surface hits within ten meters or so. I would need to reconfigure the system to probe deeper."

I shook my head. "Could any of these be false readings?"

"Honestly, yes. Gamma radiation is not exactly uncommon, but once I run the location algorithm we should be able to eliminate some of them. Research labs and such, but I would expect only a dozen or so hits to be caused by those."

"Yeah, 'cause people learned the hard way what gamma rays can do to a human," Sam muttered, a clear reference to our missing friend Bruce Banner and his cranky, green alter-ego.

That still left dozens and dozens of potential targets. There was no way in hell I and my small team could cover even half of those locations in a reasonable amount of time.

"We're fucked," Bucky muttered. "Call Hill."

I didn't argue, she needed this info pronto if we wanted to even attempt to prevent another bomb from going off. I nodded to Scott who shifted to another computer and within moments Hill's face appeared on the secondary screen.

"Sir, how can I help today?" she gave me a tight smile, clearly there was something going on at her end.

"We have bad news and worse news," Scott informed her.

She cocked an eyebrow, possibly surprised by his presence, but not willing to remark upon it at the moment. "And that would be?"

Scott tapped a few keys. "Should be up on your screen now."

"How did… Never mind." Her eyes widened at the data she now had access to. "Did you modify the algorithm Banner used to track the tesseract?"

"Seemed to be the simplest solution," I told her with a shrug of my shoulders.

She snorted, a tight smile cracking her normally stoic features. "So did we. Though you seemed to have refined the search better. You have nearly twice as many hits as us." She looked over the data for a few minutes before speaking again. "This is a problem."

"No shit," Sam grumbled.

"Can you run the most recent prediction table and compare it to the hits? Might give us a place to start," Bucky suggested, still looking at the map instead of at Hill.

Maria's eyebrows shot up at his suggestion, but her fingers flew over the keyboard in front of her and within seconds she had four of the hits highlighted. "These are the next targets according to our table."

"Which is first?" Wanda asked, already thinking ahead to the logistics of hitting all of them as efficiently as possible.

"None," Maria answered. "All four are coming up as the next target. Same window, so I would suspect same time."

I sighed heavily. "When?"

"Within the next week."

"Scott, can you refine and get specific locations?" We would need to know within a few hundred yards at worst if we stood any hope of finding them.

"Maybe? I'll need to boost the processing power somehow."

"I can help with that. If you'll permit me to assist," Maria offered casually. Too casually in my opinion, but what choice did we have?

She looked me dead in the eye because she knew this would require using not only Avenger resources but possibly government ones as well. "Only if you include T'Challa, he has offered to assist and has tech we'll be able to make use of."

She actually brightened at that idea. "I wondered how you managed to acquire all those toys," she commented even as she leaned back to signal someone over and begin making arrangements.

Scott snorted in amusement. He knew exactly where we'd gotten the money from.

I just didn't really want to reveal the fact we'd acquired Hydra funds. At some point, she would question how we were pulling off some of these stunts, but for right now she was willing to not press and take care of business. When this was over, however…

"We need prevent the next four from going off, then we'll worry about shutting down the remainder. Can I presume you wish to be involved?" Hill asked both look and tone neutral as if my response would not matter one way or another.

A stupid question, but I understood the need to give us an out. To permit us the opportunity to hide in our corner and hope for the best. But, given we'd been there at the start... "We would like to see this through to the finish."

"It might be a one-way trip, you... all of you understand that, right?"

Consensus came from everyone in the room, including Scott who had thrown in with us for good or ill. "Do you want to meet at a neutral location for the final planning?"

"Possibly. I'll let you know within the hour. We'll need to split you up."

Wanda cleared her throat, not liking that in the least. Bucky's frown agreed with that assessment.

"Maria…"

"Captain Rogers, this mission has been deemed of the utmost importance. All sins will be forgiven for the duration. After… I can make no promises."

I glanced over at both Wanda and Bucky, who both gave me tiny nods of acceptance. They would trust in my trust of Hill for the time being. More, trust that I would get them out if they were arrested once the job had been completed.

"Within the hour."

 

~^~^~^~

 

As planned we'd split up.

Fours teams to prevent four implosions that could potentially change the face of the planet if they were permitted to go off. Wanda with Bucky. Scott with Vision. And Tony with whomever currently wore War Machine. I doubted Rhodey could be well enough to wear the suit again without major modifications. Not that Tony wouldn't do that for him, but spinal injuries were nothing to mess around with. Far more likely someone else had taken up the mantle.

I'd ended up with Sam. My choice. Each team with a mixed contingent of Wakandan's and an Avengers support team. Nearly two dozen with each pair in order to make certain no one remained in the potential blast zone.

Except for those willing to sacrifice their lives in the name of the greater good.

You know. Us.

The heroes.

Those that had without a doubt or a sane thought in their head had signed on to give their lives for others.

I felt bad for the Wakandan's given we'd ended up with the Alaskan location. The snow had melted away, but the air remained decidedly cool in comparison to where I'd been living, never mind their home deep in the jungles of Africa.

There wouldn't be much for us to do other than finding the bomb and disable it. The nearest town of any size, Eagle Village, some ten miles south of us along the Yukon River, so aside from keeping ourselves from being trampled by an angry moose or eaten by a wandering grizzly bear, we would be fine. Most of the area swallowed up by the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve.

We were actually due east of Fairbanks near the Canadian border, the nearest known fault miles away, most actually nearer to the coast and the Aleutian islands, so we could only wonder why they'd chosen to apparently set off the bomb so far away. Not the first time an implosion had been in an unexpected area, but given the damage had been cumulative made some sense. If permitted to play out to the end they speculated the face of the planet would look very different, the slow shift of continents brought about swiftly and in a far more dramatic manner. Those living atop the thin crust of the planet tossed about like a child's toys when the table they stood upon were bumped into. We would fall and not get back up for an exceedingly long time.

"Sam, any luck?"

Sam, Redwing and a host of drones flew over the area trying to narrow down the location of the source of the gamma radiation.

"Not yet. They could have stuck the damn thing in a tree and no one would have noticed."

"How did they get it there?" one of the Wakandan's asked and I had to agree it was a damn good question.

"Sam, check for open areas that someone could have landed in, old logging roads, anything that clearly is man made." I gave the young man a nod of thanks and got a thin smile in return.

They fully understood the seriousness of the matter, but without a clue on where to go we had no clue where to go. We'd landed down near the river in one of the spring flood washes, now dry and deemed solid enough to hold the weight of two quinjets. Everything went up from here.

"Captain, IR is showing us what might be caves to the northeast of us." The teams donated by Maria, most former SHIELD agents, had come with full tech support and the skill to use it. Hill had chosen this crew well and given us access to everything we could possibly need to resolve this with the fewest casualties possible. If we could just find the damn device.

"Sam?"

"On it."

The kid - they all looked so damned young - nodded, assuring me he had sent the data to Sam.

"Not caves; looks like the remains of an old mine. And the gamma ticker is going crazy."

We could hear the roar of his engines over the comms as he circled over the area.

"How far?"

"About five miles."

"Can we get a quinjet in there?" I asked of the kid standing next to me with a tablet in hand.

He shook his head. "No. Best we can do is hover above the trees and rappel down. There's a bit of a clear area in front of the mine, but not enough room to land. It's all overgrown."

"Sam, any indication anyone's been there recently?"

"I'd say that's a fair bet." He sent back images of the entrance, which had collapsed at some point during its history, clearly having been blasted open and shored up with thoroughly modern materials making it obvious someone had been there within recent memory. Months if not weeks. "Want me to check it out?"

"Negative. Use a drone. We're on our way."

I didn't even have to say a single thing. The pilots rushed into their seats and the rest of us loaded into the back of the 'jets knowing once at the location we'd be jumping out with no easy way to escape if things were to go FUBAR. One slight misjudgment and we'd all be sucked into the singularity along with half the mountain.

"Hill, we've got a target, moving in to confirm and contain."

_"Roger, Captain."_

I was first out of the quinjet. Not bothering with the rappelling line as our pilot managed to hold position twenty feet above the ground, I could jump triple that with ease. I joined Sam who stood by the entrance to the defunct mine the drones hovering about him, the wash of the quinjets causing them to wobble and sway.

He stared into the dark interior, the sunlight doing little past ten feet or so, the walls rough-hewn and showing the softening of time. "Looks like all they did was reopen it. Why here?"

Sam shrugged. "I have no clue." He gestured to the screen on his wrist. The view that of Redwing's, the night vision a washed out green he hadn't bothered to color adjust. "Not much in here but dust and whatever the last miners left behind about a hundred years ago."

I turned about to the expectant group of men and women awaiting orders. I pointed at a half dozen of them, a mix of the two teams. "Create a landing area for the 'jets." They nodded and moved off to the nearby brush and tree line, machetes appearing from the seeming thin air. "Who has the containment?"

A young, painfully young, woman, stepped forward. "I do, Captain." She managed to not salute, but barely.

"With me." She joined me and Sam. "Any luck?"

"Not yet. This tunnel leads to a makeshift elevator that drops into hell itself, possibly, but no way the signal is coming from there. Too deep. Just need to search all the side tunnels. It'll take a while."

I looked back at the expectant group who had come along to help. "Two teams, sweep the side tunnels. Do not get lost. Leave tags every ten feet minimum. Use your tech to map the place. If you find the device call out and we'll bring the containment to you."

They glanced at each other and split up without me making a single suggestion. Both teams a mix of Wakandan and Hill's, which I found interesting. They'd spent mere hours together but had still taken the time figure out their strengths and split up in the way to best benefit both teams. I would have made a few minor changes in personnel, but overall they'd chosen well on their own.

"Send all maps to Sam and we'll bounce back the complete ones to you."

I got nods all around. They flicked on the lights attached to either helmets or shoulders and they headed in without question.

"Be careful, this place is old. If it looks the least bit unsafe, mark it and turn back. Don't want any of you dead because you fell down a hole," Sam reminded, probably needlessly, but given we were in charge, didn't hurt to mother hen a bit. We both wanted everyone to walk away undamaged. Or as undamaged as possible, anyway.

They'd signed on for all the risks, including death, but that didn't mean a single one of them expected to go into that final goodnight today. I would do everything in my power to prevent it.

"Sam?"

"Nothing yet." He tapped the screen on his wrist. "This place is a maze of tunnels. They followed veins, so there's no real rhyme or reason to the design."

I should have known that. It wasn't a strip mine after all. The tools available primitive in comparison to modern mining tools, though the methods themselves differed very little. A lot of the work still done by hand and extremely dangerous.

I tried to be patient, the young woman with us standing at parade rest seemingly willing to wait an eternity without ever speaking a word. "Your name?"

"Parker, sir." The tone decidedly formal, her eyes barely meeting mine; just a quick flick before returning to stare off into the darkness of the tunnel.

"You are allowed to talk," I informed her, my lips twitching in the merest hint of a smile.

Sam snorted, still focused on the slowly building map of the interior of the mine.

"I know, sir, just not certain what to say." She shrugged. "You left the Avengers, so why bother doing this?" She seemed genuinely interested and confused.

"Because we could," Sam told her. "If he could keep himself out of trouble he never woulda joined SHIELD after New York."

Her gaze drifted from me to Sam and back again. "But you left."

I sighed heavily, not certain how to make her understand. "Captain America is what I did, not who I am." I gave her a crooked smile. "Time to be Steve Rogers for a while."

She thought about that for a long moment then nodded slowly. "Kinda seems they're not much different from each other." She waved at my current outfit that had hints of my SHIELD stealth suit in it. The Wakandan armor far more impressive with the new sigil I'd designed across the chest. I hadn't intended to make that magazine cover a reality, but I'd been outvoted and had to admit it looked impressive.

"It seems I'm not destined to live a quiet life," I informed her in a wry tone.

"I think they got something, Cap," Sam lifted his head to meet my eyes.

I shifted over to see what they'd found. The image washed out with the bright lights, but sitting on the floor appeared to be a bomb, different casing than those we'd discovered, but the same touchscreen visible, but, instead of dark and unresponsive, this one active, the blue light of the power source oozing through the seams, and around the screen odd numbers or letters shifting every couple of seconds. It reminded me of the text found on the Chitauri tech we'd collected after New York. And that… that was interesting, to say the least.

"Parker."

"Yes, sir." We ran. Sam calling out directions in my ear. I kept my pace slow for me, Parker would not be able to keep up otherwise and she had the keys to the containment.

"Sam, pull the others back to the minimum safe distance. As soon as we have the containment set up get them on the quinjets and out of here."

"We may not have that much time," he warned me, making it obvious at least one of the team had stayed behind to ensure we could see what was happening with the bomb.

"Then get them out of the mine and started back down to the river. Even with the shielding, it's going to punch a hole in the mountain. No way of knowing how much damage it'll cause."

"Understood." He barked orders out, getting replies that I only half listened to. The only team ignoring him, those that had found the bomb. Not willing to leave and cut off the information feed.

I came around that last corner and skidded to a halt. The traction non-existent on the rubble strewn floor. Whoever had planted the bomb had blasted their way into this area, the walls raw and sharp edged. The detritus cleared only enough for them to access the precise place they wanted the implosion to go off. And it had been recent enough for there to be a lack of dust over the area.

"No one noticed an explosion?" Parker questioned as she looked over the area with sharp eyes and seeing all that I had.

"There's no one out here to notice," a young Wakandan reminded in a gruff tone. "And this wasn't done with conventional explosives. Looks like it might have been a modified sonic weapon." He gestured to an area on the wall with an odd pattern in the rock. "I've seen this before."

"Which would have kept any big booms down to a minimum." And probably how they had cleared the entrance without an explosion being detected by satellite. "Clear out."

The Wakandan straightened. "Sir-"

"That's an order. We'll be right behind you."

He met my eyes as if searching for a lie, so I met his squarely, making it plain I would not be swayed from this course. He gave me a tight nod and, with a few swift orders, had his team moving ahead of him back down the dark tunnel and towards the light.

"Sir, I don't think we have much time."

I looked at the device noting, much as she had, that the sequence had begun to speed up. She didn't wait for an order and moved to the bomb, shifting the pack on her back around and removing the device that would, in theory, contain the implosion. Not like it had been tested against a singularity, though they had blown up all sorts of things to make certain it would hold with adequate success.

And it wasn't as if we had any other options.

She set it beside the bomb, hit various buttons on the device then looked up at me.

"What?"

"The shield expands to approximately twenty feet in diameter. It's an energy bubble so it's going to displace everything it touches."

I got it. Instantly. "How far back can you set it from?"

"In here?" Maybe just before the corner. The signal in here sucks."

I nodded. That meant the chances for escape would be limited. The entire tunnel system could potentially be compromised once the shield had been set, collapsing the tunnels and trapping anyone in here.

I held out my hand for the controller.

"I'm sorry, sir, but no. I will set the shield. It's my job."

I stared at her for half a second, I had no more time to spare than that. "Parker-"

"No, sir, with all due respect, you are far more valuable than I am, and… and I knew what I was signing up for when I volunteered." So damn serious and such a fool.

I gently grasped her by the upper arm and encouraged her towards the turn in the tunnel, I could at least get us to that point while arguing. "Parker, while I appreciate your willingness to die for god and country, I have no intention of allowing that to happen." I took the control from her, though she fought to hold onto it. "I can run faster than anyone else here and I'm a lot harder to kill. I have no intention of dying here today, I can promise you that."

She looked me over, wanting to make certain I meant the words.

I did.

This time.

Then she gave me a tight nod and took off at a dead run heading back the way we'd come.

I waited a slow count of ten then hit the button.

I heard an odd popping noise, then the end of the hallway glowed with a gold light before the ground beneath my feet began to rumble, the feared collapse not wasting any time in commencing.

I sucked in a deep breath, spun about, and chased Parker down.

 

I caught up with her; the end of the tunnel in sight. Even with the head start, she'd run faster than I had expected. Then again she did have the threat of death as a motivation. We'd just made it out into the daylight when the ground beneath our feet shuddered and heaved sending both of us airborne.

I managed to grab ahold of her and twist so that I took the brunt of the fall. Not that landing on the reinforced armor felt much better, but I'd done it out of pure instinct. That built in need to protect others before me kicking in. She lifted her head once we'd skidded to a stop, met my eyes for a second, then rolled off just in time to get the full show. The mine entrance spilled dirt and dust at us, a result of the collapse most likely, a fair sign the shield remained functional. The dust would be being pulled in if the singularity had escaped its confinement.

Then the entire top of the hill lifted upwards, that familiar blue glow oozing out between the gaps in the earth.

"Shit," Parker muttered. "Containment collapsed."

And we were far too close.

"Go," I ordered, both of us scrambling to our feet even as the expanding earth and dust laden air reversed its course and the hillside began to collapse into itself. The singularity inexorably drawing everything towards it.

She made it two steps before the entrance vanished, pulled into the pit the top of the mountain had become in just a few seconds.

Mountains into molehills, indeed.

I grasped her forearms, planted my feet, and prayed to any god that might answer that I could hold her until the power source burned out. She aided as best she could, digging her heels in, fingers digging into the material of the armor.

I could feel the pull and looked down to see my boots scooping deep furrows into the ground as we both were dragged to our glowing blue doom.

And then, just as suddenly it stopped and I found myself falling atop a young woman I could crush to death without meaning to. I released her arms and got my hands on the ground to either side of her torso, succeeding in stopping my forward momentum before impacting her chest.

She looked up at me, shock at having survived in her eyes. Then she took note of our current potentially compromising position and said, "Well, Captain, I usually require dinner before ending up in this situation."

I blushed. I know I did, but I appreciated her efforts at lightening the mood. "Perhaps I can repay it at a later date," I offered, meaning the words. It would be the least I could do after she had risked her life.

She grinned broadly. "I'm going to hold you to that."

"So am I," Sam said as he landed a few feet away.

I pushed off Parker and offered a hand to help her up. She gave me a nod of thanks, then looked over the remains of the mountain. "Didn't hold. We'll need to up the power in the containment field to better counter the strength of the singularity."

"Didn't they have the right numbers?" I questioned, assuming that they would build the containment for the worst case scenario.

She shrugged. "We had best guesses and suppositions and little time. I did the best I could."

"You did… Who are you," Sam asked, lifting his goggles up as he stepped over to us.

Parker. "Allaine Parker?" I guessed.

She nodded.

"Wait. They sent the designer out into the field?" Sam questioned incredulously.

She shrugged. "I had to make certain they worked. Any seismic consequences?"

Sam tapped the screen on his arm. "None. Or so minimal the nearest stations failed to register it."

"Which means even though containment failed, it was a success. We need to let the other teams know that the power source isn't strong enough. Especially the Japan team. That entire island is a seismic nightmare."

"They know," Sam stated in a tone suddenly devoid of all emotion.

"Sam?" I dreaded his response. Feared the answer that would be coming even though part of me knew what had happened.

"All the bombs went off at the same time."

Parker closed her eyes for a long moment. "Same failures at all the locations?"

Sam nodded.

"Casualties?"

"Still assessing. They are reasonably certain no civilians were killed."

That could be considered good news anyway, given the other three bombs were all in densely populated areas. And it meant all the bombs had been located prior to going off, containing the worst of the explosions at the very least. "Any team losses?"

Sam met my eyes, his heavy with what looked like guilt. "Bucky was still in the building when the implosion went off. He hasn't been heard from."

I felt as if I had been hit in my chest with a wrecking ball. I'd just gotten him back and now… now he might very well have been taken away from me.

"Sam-"

A quinjet appeared over our heads with a roar, landing in the area cleared by teams, the rear door lowering as if expectantly waiting for someone to enter.

"Captain, I can get you Japan in a few hours if we leave now," a voice said in my ear, the comms device still working even after all my efforts to destroy it. The voice heavily accented, which meant Wakandan. Apparently, he'd received the same news and had easily figured out that I would want to join the rescue efforts as quickly as possible.

I looked over at Sam. "Go. We'll regroup and meet you there."

I nodded then ran for the 'jet. The pilot lifting from the ground the instant he heard the solid thump of my feet hitting the ramp. As soon as it closed the quinjet shot away, heading west.

 

~^~^~^~

 

Dawn had just broken when we finally touched down in Sendai. An area had been cleared for us to land in the middle of the street. Not that any traffic currently moved; the whole city had been pretty much shut down in the wake of the near disaster. Here the bomb had gone off prior to the shield being set, mere seconds of delay between one and the other, but more than enough to do a ton of damage to several buildings.

One of which Bucky had been in. On the flight over I'd spoken to Hill, Wanda, Lang and everyone else I could think of, all of us who had been working together on this and converging on the Sendai location to help with the disaster. The other two locations had experienced minimal damage and the joint teams were handling the cleanup with a surprising efficiency for not having really worked together before.

Yet, it seemed as if they wanted to say more, but not over the comms, which made wonder what had occurred to make them so reluctant to speak. I had the feeling they were more concerned with who else might be listening in as opposed to my reaction.

So when I stepped out of the quinjet, both Wanda and Lang were waiting for me, though how he had gotten there before me would be a story for another time. The looks on their faces told me all I really needed to know and had clearly been in denial about the entire flight.

I'd spoken to a dozen people during the flight, but Bucky had not been one of them. And that… that more than anything had caused a frisson of, not fear, maybe worry, definitely wrongness to remain in the back of my mind, not to be examined too closely.

For if I did, if I faced it I would be forced to admit to what I wanted, needed to not be true; that'd there'd been a casualty to our tight-knit group and I felt uncertain if I could handle the reality I was about to face.

"Report."

Wanda glanced over at Scott before blurting out the words, "He's gone."

I ignored the blow to my chest, the dull thud of my life impacting the harsh solidity of the reality of the situation like my body to the concrete after a freefall even a super soldier could not survive. Yet I endured.

"What happened?" I asked, my gaze bland, my back straight, not about to show them the cracks in the mortar, the crumbling of the base I'd rebuilt myself upon. I didn't get to be the weak one. I had to be strong for all of them, no matter that I wanted no more than to break apart, shatter into a billion pieces and be blown away on the slightest breeze.

Wanted to no longer bear that mantle of responsibility that weighed so heavily upon my shoulders, but I had no clue how to shrug the cloak off, to permit someone else to pick it up and wear it.

Wanda ground her teeth. "The handheld was faulty. The only way to set the shield was manually." Red energy flashed in her eyes. "He refused to let anyone else do it."

I sucked in a breath, not overly shocked at Bucky risking his life to save the rest of them. The guilt he wallowed in requiring a sacrifice to make proper reparations. And how better than to prove the killer had been put to rest than by saving others, not one or two this time, but, potentially, an entire planet, every living thing on the surface of this tiny world hanging in the balance of what occurred today. He had no way of knowing if the rest of us had been successful, which made the decision an easy one.

Hell, I had been prepared to do it myself mere hours ago.

"Cap, theirs wasn't the only shield with issues."

My head snapped to Scott, drawing me out of the wildly depressing thoughts swirling about my mind. "What?"

"Listen, I'm not making accusations here, but the one I set had issues as well. I got them fixed en route, but if I hadn't…" He shook his head. "Africa might be two continents right now." He glanced back over his shoulder at the building that still shed glass and bits of people's lives onto the ground, papers floating down like oversized confetti at a welcome home parade.

Just the possibility that someone had tried to get rid of even part of my team shook me to the core. And the fact that they might have succeeded with Bucky caused red anger to bleed into my sight. While I found it hard to believe Parker would have participated in an attempt to remove those former Avengers unwilling to sign the Accords or follow the rules, I could see it being arranged by those above her pay grade. A lot of problems would be solved should me and mine be removed from the playing field. A lot of the backlash the UN had been receiving gone in the blink of an eye. Or, in this case, the wormhole created by an uncontrolled, if temporary, singularity.

I stalked past Scott and Wanda, both falling in behind and trailing after.

"They won't let you in. They haven't stabilized the building yet." Wanda didn't try to stop me.

"Then let's help them."

The tight-lipped non-response seemed to suggest they had tried that exact thing and been turned away, possibly with prejudice.

Scott snickered. "Go, team Cap."

 

 


	13. postscript

We found him alive.

It took three days, digging through the rubble of two buildings that the initial blast had torn into and that had later collapsed into the pit that had been made in the bowels of the one.

The how would be debated hotly for months to come, but in the end, it didn't really matter.

He'd survived.

I had refused to leave, refused to be patient and let those better able to do so do their jobs. How could I... how could we when we quite literally had the power to assist. To move forward at faster than a snail's pace. Wanda's powers, my muscles, Scott's ability to get into places no full-sized human ever could hope to.

Then Hill had come through on her promise to help by getting any and all who wished to assist there in record time.

Even Iron Man made an appearance. Both suit and money to throw at the problem, though he seemed to do little more than speak to the media. Insisting that we, meaning me and my unofficial band of superheroes, were not to blame for the destruction. That the U.N. and Avengers had been involved for months in the effort to prevent exactly this from happening.

And while not a total lie, the statement also so exceedingly far from the truth.

I didn't much care. My focus on the ever so faint chance Bucky would be found.

And more, found alive.

I'd prepared myself for a goodbye. Certain that when we made it to the bottom that there would be nothing to find, for even though he had succeeded in setting the containment shield in place, he would have been inside it for the duration it remained functional.

With the singularity.

That inexorable hungry maw wanting no more than to gather everything within reach in and swallow it down whole.

Scott had crunched the numbers in one of those moments he'd taken the time to rest. His far more mortal than my body requiring rest every now and then. The likelihood of Bucky having survived an infinitesimally small number. Wanda had shushed him when realizing I had been within earshot, but the paltry chance of success didn't stop either of them from getting back up and continuing the exhausting work.

So when Wanda lifted that slab of concrete that hadn't shattered on the way down to reveal the battered body James Barnes, no one had been more shocked than me.

His left hand wrapped about the superstructure of the building. One, like that in most high rises in modern Japan, designed to withstand a major earthquake. The very foundation built to remain in place no matter the violence happening about it.

A saving grace of sorts.

In that fraction of an instant, between the bomb going off and setting the containment, he'd grasped onto a lifeline. A chance. A potential at seeing another sunrise. Somehow, he had withstood the initial explosion. Amazing in and of itself, but he'd also resisted the pull of a nearby gravity field.

Scott's numbers meaningless in the face of one man's built in survival instinct.

And they called me stubborn.

His clothes had been shredded. The armor designed to handle an RPG torn from his body. His skin broken and bruised from impacts that had occurred after the containment had collapsed. The weight of an entire building falling upon his fragile tissue.

Yet he had held on.

Ignoring those who warned me to stay in place, I jumped down next to my friend, still expecting to find little more than an empty husk. Nothing other than a body to bury.

Then his chest moved. Lungs expanding to take in the first fresh air he'd had in days.

Within seconds I'd been joined by a team whose only goal would be to rescue him from this pit and carry him to safety.

I remained nearby as they checked him. Gave him oxygen. Cut him free from the section of the building he'd clung to, unable to get his hand to open, the arm damaged and locked into its current position.

Stayed by his side as they lifted him out. Rode with him to the nearest hospital. Waited with impatience as they examined him. Listened to their words as they explained what their tests had revealed.

We found him alive.

He'd survived.

But no more than that.

His body just that.

A shell.

Whatever spark that had made him Bucky gone.

 

 

 

_finis_

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so this story comes to a close. Thanks for reading.
> 
> Here, have music...
> 
> Songlist:
> 
> Heroes - Hans Zelmerlow  
> Wolves - Coasts  
> Demons - Imagine Dragons  
> Human - Manafest  
> Broken - Lifehouse  
> All Fall Down - OneRepublic  
> Bad News - Bastille  
> Ghost in the Crowd - Sister Hazel  
> Something Just Like This - The Chainsmokers & Coldplay  
> Burn - Ellie Goulding  
> running up that hill - placebo  
> Snowblind - Styx  
> Human - Christina Perri  
> Up All Night - Alex Clare  
> Save Me - Unwritten Law  
> Iris - The Goo Goo Dolls  
> What I've Done - Linkin Park


End file.
